


\1 



^ 



RANGE AND GERMANY 



i! ■. KY GAUL 




LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

Chap. Copyriglit No. 

Slielf_lCL_Ja.5^ 
^(X ^^ 

j UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



THE PATEENAL 
STATE IN FRANCE 
AND GEEMANY 

By HEN BY GAULLIEUB 




NEW YORK AND' LONDON 
HARPEE & BEOTHEES PUBLISHEES 

1898 



G 4-3 3 
2„^ 



2?« 



'> /» i ■♦ 




rvVO COPIES RECEIVED. 



Copyright, 1898, by Harper & Brothers. 




All rights reserved. 






*'/ £?o ?to< suppose any reader of mine, or many persons in England 
at all, have much faith in Fraternity, Equality, and the Revolutionary 
Millenniums preached by the French prophets in this age ; hut there are 
many m.ovem.ents here, too, which tend inevitably in the like direction ; and 
good men who would stand aghast at Red Republic and its adjuncts seem 
to me to be travelling at full speed towards that or a similar goal." 

— Carltle, Latter-Day Pamphlets. 



CONTENTS 



CHAP. PAGE 

I. The Continental System and the Colonial 

Failure 3 

II. The jMedi^val Commonwealth 26 

III. Versailles 49 

IV. French Democracy 67 

V. Bonapartism 103 

VI. Royal Resurrection 123 

VII. French Populism 131 

VIII. Old Germany 152 

IX. Modern Germany 181 

Conclusion 224 



INTKODUCTION 



It is almost an impertinence nowadays to remind a 
reader of past events ; we travel so fast through life 
that old scenes, if remembered at all, are remembered 
only as it were by their picturesque features, by their 
peculiarly odd or extraordinary forms. Our allotted 
time is brief, and the past, with its cumbersome civiliza- 
tion, is ever receding from our view. Nevertheless, we 
all know that nothing happens by accident in human 
evolution ; that there is a cause behind every phenome- 
non, be it a physical, a political, or a social one ; and we 
know that there is a law connecting the cause with the 
effect recorded in past annals. 

It has always struck me that the relations existing be- 
tween some of the most important phenomena of French 
and German history, and their real, permanent causes, 
have never been sufficiently examined. If we all know, 
for instance, why the French nation overthrew its old 
absolute monarchy in 1793, we seldom ask ourselves why 
a still more absolute and despotic republic, and, later on, 
an absolute and despotic empire, were substituted for it. 
Again, we all know that the modern French and German 
people, borrowing parliamentary forms from England, 
are now using elective methods in constituting their leg- 

vii 



INTKODUCTION 

islative assemblies ; bnt why these two states are strug- 
gling now with such diseases as socialism and militarism, 
the two modern products of their political activity, does 
not appear to me to have been sufficiently explained ; 
for the alleged causes of these diseases are not causes, 
but effects only. 

I have tried to investigate here the causes of some of 
the results obtained in France and Germany from the 
transfer to the *^ state ^' of those individual rights and 
privileges which English-speaking nations — and particu- 
larly the American people — have so far considered in- 
separable from individual welfare, and consequently in- 
dispensable to national prosperity. Originally both France 
and Germany had the same feudal constitution as Eng- 
land ; but both France and Germany, by increasing grad- 
ually the authority of the ^'state,^'' have obtained results 
totally different from those obtained in England. In 
both of the former countries the national government 
can be maintained by military force alone ; were this 
force removed, both Paris and Berlin would become 
again the scene of revolutionary efforts tending to over- 
throw legal and constitutional authority ; while in Eng- 
land, in the United States, or in Canada and Australia, 
nobody ever thinks of upsetting governments by revolu- 
tionary methods. Nevertheless, France, like the United 
States, is republican in form ; while Germany, like Eng- 
land, is a monarchy. But while the English monarchy 
and the American republic are enjoying the blessings of 
internal peace, the German monarchy and the French 
republic have both reached the same evil results and ex- 
hibit the same sores. Consequently, it is evident that 
these two states must be suffering from a common cause 
of disease ; while monarchical England and republican 
America must owe their present political health to a 

viii 



INTRODUCTION 

common doctrine entirely independent from outward 
forms or appearances. The French and German doc- 
trine of state paternalism, with all its consequences, seems 
to me to be the common cause of the French and Ger- 
man national ill-health ; to it alone, as we shall see by 
historical evidence, can we attribute not only most of 
all their past disasters, but also their present political 
misery. 

A great object-lesson is contained in this past history ; 
it may be of some interest to American readers, by show- 
ing what results are obtained by a nation as soon as the 
state is invested with attributes which individuals alone 
should possess, and with an authority which they should 
never abdicate. I do not pretend that the facts presented 
in the following pages are new, nor do I claim to have de- 
scribed to the reader historical events not described be- 
fore by French or German writers ; but in the course of 
my humble efforts to trace the real and true causes of 
these historical phenomena, I have had to study their 
various aspects and features ; and I became convinced 
that the latter were not merely external '' accidents " due 
to ^^ national ill-luck," but that they were rather symp- 
toms of a disease which could only be understood by a 
somewhat thorough investigation of the phenomena 
themselves. 

There has been lately a tendency in the United States 
to attribute much curative power to the government in 
the treatment of social and political difficulties. For 
the last few years, many citizens animated by the best 
intentions have advocated the adoption of certain reme- 
dies — so-called populistic measures — by which, in their 
opinion, certain troubles would infallibly be removed. 
But these theories, aiming to put an end in the United 
States to the conflict between the interests of individu- 

ix 



INTRODUCTION 

als or corporations and the interests of the community, 
are in reality very old. The proposed remedies have 
been tried and applied elsewhere, in small doses at first 
during past centuries, then in increased and enormous 
quantities, till the European continent has become more 
and more afflicted by their poisonous influence. The 
American remedy may bear a different label, and be of a 
different color and even different taste. But, however 
palatable it may be made by national ingenuity, chemical 
analysis proves it to be simply (in an apparently milder 
form) an old French and German remedy, the same old 
narcotic, destined to produce, first partial, then total in- 
dividual lethargy; a drug extensively advertised and 
used by all continental governments of Europe on the 
plea of '^ national welfare." Erench and German civiliza- 
tions, with their present decay, are the practical result 
of the doctrine prescribing the interference of the state 
for the removal of all objectionable features in national 
development. 

However mild the American remedy may appear in 
comparison to its Erench and German prototype, the 
policy which prescribes its use is such a departure from 
the old and traditional diet of the English-speaking com- 
munities, and such an imitation of Erench and German 
national policies, that its adoption would practically 
amount to a destruction of all the old safeguards of 
Anglo-Saxon liberties. If the omnipotence of the state 
is proclaimed as a preventive and curative principle 
against national ills, if the doctrine is admitted that the 
interests of the people, the rights of the people, the wel- 
fare of the people, are supreme entities before which all 
individuals must bow down, it becomes clear that the pro- 
tective barrier behind which individual activity thrives 
has ceased to exist. If the interests of the people re- 



INTRODUCTION 

quire, for instance, the establishment of state monopolies 
in order to prevent individual encroachments, it becomes 
a secondary question whether the state is to control only- 
telegraphs and telephones, or investigate private incomes, 
or manufacture tobacco and matches, as in France ; or 
provide alcohol, as in Switzerland ; or take possession of 
individual man, body and soul, as in modern Germany : 
and the solution of this question will then depend en- 
tirely upon the political weather, so to speak. If the 
doctrine of paternalism of the state is once recognized 
as the panacea for all political ills, it depends only upon 
accidental circumstances whether the tutelary protec- 
tion, to be extended over the land to secure the much- 
coveted national welfare, shall end in a mild despotism 
or in a reign of terror. That the people is the source 
of all political power no American will deny ; but the 
question arises whether it will promote its welfare by 
abdicating rights which are the foundation of this power, 
to an abstract, ideal entity, whose practical activity can- 
not be exercised otherwise than through the channel of 
a bureaucratic oligarchy. 

That the illusory benefits of a paternal state authority 
should fascinate highly intelligent men is not strange ; 
for as long as men will be men, every honest mind will 
feel indignation against greed, sordid ambition, and the 
unscrupulous advantages obtained by some over many ; 
and this feeling will be followed by a desire to find means 
for relieving suffering fellow-men from oppressive con- 
ditions. The idea is then naturally suggested that the 
state, being the delegate of the community, should be 
invested with sufficient authority to bring about such 
reforms as would promote a general happiness. This 
suggestion is almost as old as the world, and is prompted 
by a most philanthropic sentiment, the hatred of injus- 

xi 



INTRODUCTION 

tice and wrong. The state becomes thus intrusted with 
a mission which very soon takes the practical form of an 
imperative despotism, and which must then be extended 
gradually to all branches of human activity ; and in the 
attempt to realize divine justice on earth the state is 
expected to perform functions which no human func- 
tionaries — the only tools it possesses — can perform. 
Louis XIV"., the French Eepublic, Napoleon, and the 
fourteen different kinds of governments established and 
removed by the French nation during the last hundred 
years were all invested with supreme authority, in virtue 
of the principle that the state alone could promote the 
public welfare and protect the public interests. This 
principle was established everywhere on the European 
continent, and it remains in force there to this day. Not 
wise enough to find other methods for removing objec- 
tionable and oppressive local monopolies or privileges, 
as the English community had done, the continental 
nations created the only monopoly against which there 
never is any redress at all — except revolution and armed 
resistance — the monopoly of the paternal state. 

In investigating the history of these continental na- 
tions, one is reminded of the Oriental story, in which a 
number of children being unable to divide fairly among 
themselves a bag of walnuts, applied to an old sage of 
their town, well known for his wisdom : ^^How do you 
wish me to divide these walnuts among you ?" said the 
sage; *^ shall I do it according to principles of divine 
or of human justice ?" 

"According to divine justice, of course,'' answered 
the children, in chorus. 

The old man then handed one walnut to one of the 
boys, two to his neighbor, and a dozen to the next one ; 
then he gave the whole bag to another. The children 

xii 



INTRODUCTION 

having all remonstrated against this extraordinary pro- 
ceeding : '^ Did you not ask me," exclaimed the sage, 
** to divide your walnuts according to divine justice ? 
And does not Providence always proceed in this manner 
when dividing her favors among mankind ?" 

This story is an old one ; but in one sense men will 
always remain children — they expect divine justice on 
earth. In their vain attempts to obtain ideal results 
of this kind, the continental nations of EurojDe have 
signally failed to improve their condition by such means. 
What the state was expected to do alwavs showed in the 
greatest contrast with its practical work. The ideal 
relief expected from the state, and the real results ob- 
tained from its representative organs, were at all times 
two diametrically opposed and widely different quanti- 
ties. The gulf that separates more and more every day 
the overwhelming civilization of the English-speaking 
communities from the decaying polity of the European 
continent, takes its origin in the difference of attributes 
conferred by the people on the state ; for while the power 
transferred by the individuals to the state was jealously 
restricted in aill Anglo-Saxon communities, this power 
was constantly increased on the European continent. If 
the manager was often dismissed, and a new one ap- 
pointed, the power conferred on him by the owners — 
the people — has hardly ever been altered ; in fact, when- 
ever such an alteration took place, it was never a restric- 
tion, but a new increase of authority which was effected 
by the change ; as, for instance, when the state was au- 
thorized to abolish voluntary enlistment in the army, 
and substitute for it universal and compulsory service — 
universal and compulsory military serfdom of three years 
in barracks. 

A few glimpses at the historical records of the two 

xiii 



INTRODUCTION 

principal nations of continental Europe, which in direct 
contradiction to Anglo-Saxon principles, have so obsti- 
nately continued to invest their government at all times 
witli omnipotent and ideal functions, may awake per- 
haps in the minds of our populistic friends a suspicion 
that after all the state is not a divine goddess having 
direct access to the shrine of wisdom ; but that the state 
must in the end always turn out to be practically a num- 
ber of more or less intelligent human beings sitting in 
public buildings — generally on upholstered chairs — sur- 
rounded by a vast crowd of their own delegates, all work- 
ing for wages, generally from nine or ten o'clock to sun- 
down ; all liable, like other men, to be wise or foolish, 
honest or dishonest, conscientious or not. Perhaps 
these short glimpses at the blessings secured by two 
great nations, through this incessant intervention of 
their governments in individual affairs, may remind an 
American reader that whatever objectionable features the 
old Anglo-Saxon principles of individual independence 
may have developed in America, it is certainly not to 
populistic methods borrowed from the European conti- 
nent that he should apply for relief. 

As I have said, the origin of all paternal governments 
is the same ; they were and are all established in order 
to remove troubles arising from individual abuses, in 
order to promote the "welfare of the people.'' No 
'^'^ people" can get along without delegating power to a 
certain number of men, who then become the " state " ; 
and practically, wherever the delegated power is too great, 
wherever, under the pretence of protecting the interests 
of the people, the state is allowed free scope for interfer- 
ence with individual affairs, political and moral disaster 
ensues. This at least is the invariable result of scientific 
evidence gathered from all human historical records. 

xiv 



INTRODUCTION 

I have tried to collect some of that evidence in the 
following pages ; they present — I am aware of it — a very- 
incomplete and very imperfect relation, but my object 
was not to write a history of the political development 
of Erance and Germany ; my aim was simply to remind 
the reader of some facts which nobody has denied, bnt 
which in my opinion have been too much forgotten, and 
which were the direct result of the French and German 
doctrine. Consequently, I present these facts to the 
reader, not as a complete exposition of the political sys- 
tem of Europe, but merely as some of the results obtained 
by a political doctrine devised to foster the public weal 
in France and Germany. The collected evidence shows 
that under the influence of these theories '' the people " 
loses very soon its political energy, that the individual 
men who are the component units of '''the people"' lose 
their dignity and self-respect, their former superiority, 
and that they become mere dummies in the hands of 
their paternal state. What fearful atrocities and cruel- 
ties are then committed on both sides, when the inevita- 
ble struggle takes place to recover from ^^the state" 
rights foolishly delegated by the members of the com- 
munity ; to what a life of political misery, and to what 
condition of individual degradation and national weak- 
ness, the transfer of individual rights to the state con- 
demns a nation — this is what the evidence shows too. 
For the present unhealthy condition of the European 
continent is not the result of an accident, no more than is 
the wonderful political expansion of the English-speaking 
peoples. Both are the logical outcome of the different 
manner in which the individuals composing the conti- 
nental nations have lived for generations ; and their meth- 
ods of life were determined by the manner in which they 
understood their own duties and the functions of the state. 

XV 



INTRODUCTION 

The task of writing this book might certainly have 
been performed in a manner more satisfactory to the 
reader had the author been a native, instead of only an 
adopted citizen, of the United States. Educated in a 
French-speaking country, where he was admitted to the 
bar as a young man, and at the same time a graduate 
and a doctor of laws of German universities, he may 
have been facilitated in his work by his familiarity with 
European habits and peculiarities ; but if this early train- 
ing was favorable to the proper understanding of Euro- 
pean history, this advantage was perhaps more than off- 
set by the necessity of treating this subject in the 
language of the reader. In this task he has been greatly 
assisted by Mr. George de Olyver Curtis, who kindly con- 
sented to revise the manuscript. 



THE PATEENAL STATE IN FEANCE 
AND GEEMANY 



CHAPTER I 

THE COKTIN'ENTAL SYSTEM AI^D THE COLONIAL FAILUKE 

The close of our century presents an extraordinary 
spectacle of much importance to the next generation of 
English-speaking people — namely, that while the influ- 
ence of the continental nations of Europe seems to be- 
come more and more restricted to their old territorial 
limits or to so-called " colonies/' occupied chiefly by sol- 
diers and state officials, the spread of Anglo-Saxon civil- 
ization has surpassed all prevision. 

Two hundred years ago, according to Macaulay, the 
population of England and her colonies was between five 
and six millions. That of France, as set forth in the tax- 
records of the year 1698, exceeded nineteen millions, and 
that of Germany was probably more than twenty-five mill- 
ions. From that time to the present the French and 
the German peoples have each doubled in number, but the 
speakers of English, so early as the year 1831, had in- 
creased from five to thirty-five millions, and now number 
no fewer than one hundred and thirty-five million souls. 

But it is not only in population that the English- 
speaking race leads all others. According to statistics, 
they are first in almost everything. A glance at Mr. 
MulhalFs work. The Industries and Wealth of Nations^ 
shows this fact clearly enough. Whether it is in wealth, 

3 



THE CONTINENTAL SYSTEM 

energy, steam-power, mannfactnres, commerce, books, or 
earnings and wages, it is the same story. First comes the 
United Kingdom, or the United States, then the British 
colonies, while the rear is brought up by the nations of 
the European continent. 

We all know that individual liberty, reinforced by the 
discovery of steam and electricity, was the cause of this 
great progress. The mind of man — not the mountains, 
the valleys, or the sea — is the true cause of national pros- 
perity ; for the rich territories that were conquered and 
occupied long ago by Spain and by France remained use- 
less to them. But from the little European island where 
the old feudal liberties of the nobles had been extended 
to the masses of the people, and had been preserved and 
adapted to modern wants, instead of being destroyed, as 
on the Continent, there issued armies of peaceable set- 
tlers to organize new communities in all parts of the 
globe. They own to - day more than one - half of the 
world's habitable area. All signs show that the rate at 
which the English-speaking nations have pushed for- 
ward during this century will not only continue, but 
even increase ; and we may foresee that the unimpor- 
tance of the continental states of Europe, outside of Eu- 
ropean boundaries, will become more and more marked. 

A glimpse at the statistics of the present colonies of 
France, and at those which imperial Germany is so fond 
of quoting as an evidence of its growing importance, 
shows the almost ludicrous condition of their national 
expansion. 

The French colonies, vast in extent, in spite of former 
losses, do not contain three hundred thousand French- 
men ; yet France began to colonize over three hundred 
years ago. Algeria, the most important colony of France, 
conquered about sixty-five years ago, situated at a day and 

4 



AND THE COLONIAL FAILURE 

a night's travel from French shores, contains, according 
to the last census, 233,939 Frenchmen. This includes 
the army and the functionaries whose duty it is to " ad- 
minister " the country. According to French statistics, 
all the rest of the French colonies put together do not 
contain more French inhabitants than could be found in 
a second-rate town in the mother-country. Even at the 
time when France possessed the greater part of North 
America, the condition of state-ridden Canada and Loui- 
siana, and the growing success of English rivals, showed 
that the prosperity of the New World must come through 
methods far different from hers. 

If we turn to the German efforts at colonization, of 
which we have heard so much, thanks to German im. 
perial buncombe during the last quarter of a century, 
the figures presented by government statistics become so 
extraordinary that they elicit a smile on the lips of the 
astonished reader. The prominent fact of these statis- 
tics is the paucity — not to say the absence — of German 
population in the colonies in question, and the vast army 
of officials. In many important districts the officials 
make up the bulk of the population reported as Ger- 
mans, while in others it would appear that the white 
population, apart from the officials, is principally com- 
posed of British subjects. Take German Southwest 
Africa, for example. Here there are 586 civil officials, or 
constabulary, while the total of the German population is 
returned at 932. Of British subjects, however, there are, 
including the Capelanders, no fewer than 880. An im- 
portant fact is that most of the German officials are 
single men, while the Cape settlers have numerous 
families. In German East Africa the situation is still 
worse. In the important district of Tanga, the Euro- 
pean population returned in June, 1895, amounted only 

5 



THE CONTINENTAL SYSTEM 

to 134, nearly all German state functionaries. The total 
exports of all German colonies never greatly exceeded 
three millions of dollars ; the imports, of which the most 
important article was alcoholic liquors, till some recent 
legislation regulated its sale to the natives, never reached 
even that figure. 

An idea of the insignificance of the French and Ger- 
man colonial work may be deduced from the fact that all 
the French and German inhabitants of these immense 
territories, conquered purely by force, could not fill a 
single city such as Melbourne or Cincinnati. Neverthe- 
less, as we remarked, France has worked for three or 
four centuries at her colonial enterprises ; and, although 
the German attempt to imitate the Spanish and the 
French colonial policy is of comparatively recent date, 
the fact that Germany has continued to pour its large 
surplus population into Anglo-Saxon countries, and that 
German emigration has persisted in refusing to settle 
under the national flag, shows that the German colonial 
collapse is not due to a mere accident. 

It could not be otherwise. An3^body familiar with the 
needs of a prosperous new community, be it a far west- 
ern American county, a Ehodesian settlement, or a young 
town in Australia, knows how indispensable to its life is 
complete freedom — free scope for all forms of activity, 
and independence from military and bureaucratic inter- 
ferejice. But, according to the theory of the German 
State, such freedom is fatal to German '^^Bildung," or 
civilizg,|;ion. Thus, even if Germany could succeed in 
diverting the flow of emigration to her own colonies, the 
settlers would very soon object to being governed from 
Berlin by imperial functionaries with no real devotion to 
the land. Local interests would always be conflicting 
with bureaucratic rule, for the interests of a military 

6 



AND THE COLONIAL FAILURE 

and civil garrison are not identified with those of set- 
tlers. Could any prosperous ^^new" community exist 
without perfect freedom of the press, of '^meetings/' of 
criticism of the government — liberties so necessary to 
those whose aim it is to convert v/ildernesses into civil- 
ized commonwealths ? Any one who knows how indis- 
pensable to the very existence of the German state is the 
doctrine of government from above, by military obedi- 
ence to bureaus and red-tape ; and any one who has seen 
a new, rising community at work in a wild country, 
knows how antagonistic to each other the interests of 
the settlers and the interests of the mother - country 
would necessarily become. 

A glance at the conditions regulating to-day all hu- 
man activity on the continent of Europe shows how un- 
favorable such conditions are to the development and 
expansion of the people. The state, with its military and 
bureaucratic machinery, has gradually absorbed all the 
people^s energy. The individual man has been stunted 
by constant pressure from above. Trimmed down to a 
fore-ordained state pattern, he has lost all those quali- 
ties which are indispensable in self-governing communi- 
ties. Let us consider some of the prominent features of 
the continental doctrine. 

To-day, hardly has the modern French " citizen " or 
the German '^ subject" opened his eyes in this world be- 
fore the state appears, compelling the parents or the 
witnesses of this important event to report it to an of- 
ficial. This statute, enacted originally for purposes of 
philanthropy, would be quite unobjectionable if it had 
not soon degenerated into a selfish regulation for record- 
ing that one more has been added to the herd of future 
taxpayers and soldiers. The life of the new citizen or 
subject does not really belong to him, but to the state, 

7 



THE CONTINENTAL SYSTEM 

for by another legal statute he is taught that he should 
be ready at all times to sacrifice his life, not for his own 
interests or those of his family, but for the political am- 
bition of the government. He is told that he should 
^^die for his country." Whether this word '^^ country"* 
represents true principles for which a man and a Chris- 
tian should be willing to fight and die, or whether it 
stands merely for a fictitious ideal with no principles at 
all, is a matter of no consequence in the case of the cit- 
izen. 

The child condemned by his ill luck to open his eyes 
on that part of the world must be a soldier at the dis- 
posal of the state. The doctrine is thus taught to the 
child that military triumphs are the loftiest expression 
of human power. Thus when the child grows up to be 
a man, crazed by national education, the only '* unpatri- 
otic " feature of war for him will be its cost, and the only 
moral question to solve will be whether his country is 
sure to win. Too often has all Europe been plunged 
into war simply because success seemed assured to the 
aggressor. 

Now the child goes to school ; also to church, where 
the paternal state, under the pretence of preaching 
Christian duties, maintains official state preachers under 
the supervision of its overseers — the Ministre des Cultes, 
or Minister of Public AVorship, in France ; the Minister 
of Ecclesiastical Affairs, in Prussia. The Minister of 
Worship in France is generally at the same time Min- 
ister of Public Education, or of Justice and Fine Arts. 
The Prussian Minister of Ecclesiastical Affairs is at the 



* The French pairie and the German Vaterland, for which there 
is no adequate expression in English, for the reason that the idea 
they represent is purely a continental conception. 



AND THE COLONIAL FAILURE 

same time Minister of Medical Affairs and of Public 
Education. 

Thus we see to-day in France forty thousand distribu- 
tors, or preachers, of official religion, paid by the French 
state and standing under state supervision. Since the 
French state has stopped persecuting the Protestants, 
and since the Protestant religion has had the honor to 
be " recognized ^^ — this is the official expression — by the 
state, Catholicism has ceased to be called the ^'^ state 
religion." The church remains, nevertheless, an insti- 
tution of the state, saving souls officially, according to 
church regulations, which must be approved by state 
functionaries. 

As soon as a child's education begins, the state inter- 
feres directly and indirectly, for it must stamp on the 
mind of its young slave a certain doctrine — namely, that 
without due recognition by the state all attempts at a 
liberal career are hopelessly surrounded with obstacles. 
Unless he has a private income, a young man must gain 
a diploma from the state or starve. All colleges, uni- 
versities, chemical and physical laboratories, astronomi- 
cal observatories, public libraries, technical schools, hos- 
pitals, and scientific collections are owned and controlled 
by the state in all continental countries of Europe. All 
the employes, all the professors in such institutions, are 
appointed and paid by the state, and are public officials 
under state supervision. The state has ^'Mind Over- 
seers" as well as '^Church Overseers," and they alone 
determine whether a man is useful or worthless. 

Besides diplomas, titles, decorations, and distinctions 
of all sorts, the state has other means to influence na- 
tional intelligence ; nor is its absolute control of all in- 
stitutions of learning the only power it possesses to govern 
minds. It accustoms the people to trust only to the 

9 



THE CONTINENTAL SYSTEM 

judgment of the state for the selection of private advis- 
ers or assistants. No man can earn his bread in France 
or Germany in a liberal profession unless he has publicly 
been endorsed by the authorities. Without such recog- 
nition the people will not trust to merit alone. The 
faith in the wisdom of the authorities, disastrous though 
the result may be, is almost a religion among certain 
classes. Thus the French iourgeois will trust all his 
savings to the state, and invest all his fortune in govern- 
ment securities instead of private enterprises. This al- 
lows the French state, to borrow money at all times, and 
to increase its debt to a figure which could not be paid 
off by all the gold now circula.ting in the world — about 
six billion dollars — but at the same time it has created a 
habit of which Frenchmen always complain — that of re- 
fraining from all enterprises not supported by the state. 
While the English loan their money with much profit in 
all parts of the world, the French invest very little, even 
in their own colonies. They never would have loaned 
lately so much money to Eussia if the state had not pro- 
claimed so loudly its political partnership with the Rus- 
sian government. 

In all such measures, leading originally to the found- 
ing of a paternal state, what was intended by the people 
to be a safeguard became only a stumbling-block ; what 
was meant to be a philanthropic stimulant changed to a 
stupefying drng, a paralyzing weight ; what might have 
acted as a shield in the hands of guardian angels became 
a poisoned weapon in the hands of bureaucrats, impelled 
by ordinary human instincts and passions. As a matter 
of course, the worse the machine worked, and the more 
unsatisfactory its results, the more it had to be en- 
larged and strengthened, and the more complicated it 
grew. 

10 



AND THE COLONIAL FAILURE 

The system not only kills all inventive propensities^ but 
acts disastrously in another direction. It fills the conn- 
try with graduates of state institutions, theoretically fit 
for duties, but with no knowledge of practical work and 
with no practical sense. 

There is not a state to-day on the European continent 
whose fate may not depend entirely on the result of one 
or two battles. In this respect none of them could ex- 
hibit the staying power recorded in past centuries, when 
the destiny of the nation could not be decided in one day 
by the genius or the mistakes of a single man — the com- 
mander-in-chief. 

Not only has the modern European state transformed 
all able-bodied men into soldiers, but it has taken posses- 
sion of them, body and soul, in many other ways. The 
citizen or subject shall not marry before the state has 
given him permission ; for the state is paternal indeed, 
and in order to prevent young people from making a 
mistake, it prescribes delays, it requires the parents' 
consent up to a certain age. Should the man be an 
officer in the national army — and all well-educated young 
men of good families are generally officers — he is for- 
bidden to marry as he pleases, for the girl must have a 
specified income or dowry in her own right, and she 
must prove before competent authorities that she owns 
a sufficient fortune to marry an officer. In Germany the 
officers of the regiment themselves, acting as delegates 
of the state, must refuse their consent if the girl's father 
makes his living by physical labor ; and no German girl 
can marry a lieutenant if she has not an income of 2500 
marks a year — about six hundred dollars — in her own 
right. Imagine what an encouragement this is to false 
declarations, and how many lovers will deposit borrowed 
securities as a formality, cheating thus the paternal state 

11 



THE CONTINENTAL SYSTEM 

out of all its calculations. This rule exists in France, in 
Italy, and elsewhere, as well as in Germany. 

Should the citizen or subject decide to sell or buy real 
estate, ubiquitous state bureaucracy looms up at once ; 
and no such transfer is possible, unless it is made before 
a notary at a heavy expense, collected by the state. The 
recording of the deed alone is useful to the contracting 
parties, but the state has gradually made this service an 
excuse for imposing a heavy tax on all transfers of land. 
The only reason it can give for collecting such a percent- 
age is that it always needs money. 

When the citizen dies, the state interferes again; for 
where an income-tax exists, compelling the citizen to 
disclose every year an account of his fortune and his 
income or earnings, the state may examine the assets of 
the deceased. In some parts of Switzerland even — in 
the canton of Vaud — there is a law allowing state func- 
tionaries to invade the family home where the death has 
occurred, and to take an inventory, not only of the dead 
man's money, but even of his furniture. The French 
iourgeois, however, notwithstanding his traditional sub- 
missiveness to state despotism, has never become recon- 
ciled to such principles advocated by the continental 
demagogues, and he has till now sternly refused to allow 
any law to be passed levying an income-tax. He objects 
to disclosing his private fortune to the state, and, though 
willing to pay a high price for the satisfaction of being 
governed, he does not like to see functionaries poking 
their noses into his account-books. He knows, besides, 
what a premium on false declarations the state has es- 
tablished by this tax in all countries where it is levied. 
But when the citizen or subject is buried, escaping at 
last by natural laws from those of the paternal state, the 
control is not ended, for his estate cannot be divided as 

12 



AND THE COLONIAL FAILURE 

the owner may have wished. The state knows better 
than the individual how to divide fairly, and it imposes 
by law the division among the children. Should the 
deceased have one child, he can dispose freely only of 
one-half of his fortune ; if he has two, he can dispose 
of one-third ; if he has three children or more, he can 
dispose only of one-fourth. This law varies very little 
on the Continent. Of course the state never helped the 
owner in saving his money ; on the contrary, it levied 
the heaviest possible taxes on everything he owned — on 
his bread, on his meat, on his salt,* on the oil burning 
in his lamp, on everything he consumed in order to live, 
on everything he inherited, and on every sale of land he 
made ; but the state claims now the right to divide be- 
tween his children, more equitably than a father, any- 
thing he may have left from the agents of the govern- 
ment. 

The state has thus reduced this man to the simple 
r6le of an automaton, of a dummy living under constant 
tutelage, unfit to live elsewhere than under the shadow 
of that state whose constant assistance is necessary to 
him. Is it, then, surprising that the continental races 
have become unfit to colonize the world, and that their 
emigrants are unable to form independent, self-governing 
colonies ? 

The paternal duty of the continental state was the rea- 
son why such laws were enacted. In its anxiety to cor- 
rect, amend, and improve individual activity, in wishing 
to prevent individual mistakes and foster family union, 
the paternal state, like the paternal church, has reached 



* In Italy poor people are not allowed to carry home a pail of 
sea- water, because they would evaporate it, make a little salt, and 
thus avoid buying government salt, which is very high-priced. 

13 



THE CONTINENTAL SYSTEM 

the opposite results; for being only a human, bureau- 
cratic affair — not a real representative of divine justice 
or wisdom on earth — it was necessarily controlled, and 
managed by an oligarchy of agents. 

But what have been the other disastrous results of 
tutelary civil administration in France ? The principle 
is there laid down that the component parts of the peo- 
ple are unfit to regulate county or departmental affairs, 
the state alone possessing the necessary intelligence. 
The prefect and the sub-prefects are invested with a civil 
authority hardly equalled in Catholic countries and in 
spiritual affairs by the authority of a bishop. Both these 
functionaries, the prefect and the bishop, are sent from 
above ; the one is imposed by the state, the other by the 
church. The French mind cannot understand self-gov- 
ernment in politics, any more than it could understand 
Protestant Church democracy. At all times, under all 
regimes — and he has tried them all — the Frenchman 
must abdicate and delegate his rights of self-government 
to the state. The rural communes and departments — 
the counties — must be governed from the central au- 
thority in Paris, which, for the welfare of the people, 
sends out its omnipotent agents — the prefects — intrusted 
with despotic administrative powers. How this system 
works may be learned in Taine's well-known Origins 
of Modern France. 

"The prefect," says Taine, "is the conductor or over- 
seer, by legal statute, of all administrative services. In 
his department he is the chief inquisitor of the repub- 
lican faith, even in the recesses of home and private life. 
He is the leader of all acts and sentiments, orthodox or 
heretic, as the case may be, which can rightfully or 
wrongfully be imputed to the functionaries of the vast 
army used by the state to conquer human life ; he is the 

14 



AND THE COLONIAL FAILURE 

leader of the twenty different regiments composing this 
vast hierarchy; he is the overseer of the clergy in his 
department, of the judiciary, of the preventive and re- 
pressing police, of public education, of public charity, of 
direct and indirect taxation, of the recording officers, of 
the custom-house ; he is the overseer of state function- 
aries for bridges and highways, for state forests, for state 
stud farms, for postal service and telegraph lines, for 
tobacco and other state monopolies. He is the overseer 
of all employes in institutes which should be private en- 
terprises, such as the Sevres porcelain state factory, the 
Gobelins tapestry state factory, the deaf and dumb asy- 
lums, and the asylums for the blind, which are all con- 
trolled and managed by the state. He is the overseer 
of all persons occupied in branch state factories where 
war or navy supplies are prepared, and of many other 
establishments which I will not mention. Observe that 
the indulgence or severity of such a man affects in 
France all the retailers of fermented beverages, 377,000 
of them ! That he can take away the bread and butter 
of 38,000 clergymen, of 45,000 retail dealers of tobacco, 
of 75,000 road - keepers, and of 120,000 male and female 
school-teachers ; that directly or indirectly the ill-will or 
good- will of the prefects, since the new military law was 
enacted, affects all French adults between twenty and 
forty-five years of age ; and, since the new school laws 
were passed, all the children between six and thirteen."* 
The Minister of Worship, for instance, formally de- 
clares to the French parliament that on January 1, 1890, 
300 clergymen have been deprived by the state of their 
official salary, f How the inquisitory French state pokes 

* Taine. Le Begime Moderne, p. 430. 

■f-Anatole Leroy Beaulieu. Revue des Deux Mondes, March 1, 
1890. 

15 



THE CONTINENTAL SYSTEM 

its official tools into every French home can be seen by 
the declarations of Anatole Leroy Beaulieu, in his work. 
The RepuhUc and the Conservatives, published in March, 
1890, in the French Revue des Deux Mondes. 

^'1 speak of what I have seen,'' says he ; "I speak of 
my own district ; it is an eastern department, formerly 
represented in the House by a radical member. Now, 
the conservatives having carried the election, the state 
has first tried to annul this election ; but it could not do 
it, as the majority was too large. The state has then re- 
venged itself on the voters. The police have gone around 
in all the rural districts, investigating the conduct of the 
curates, of the rural constables, of the liquor and tobacco 
dealers. There was a state doctor of epidemics. He 
was a conservative. He was removed. The tax-collector, 
a man who had his home there, was sent west because he 
was not zealous enough. Every functionary who did not 
show his grief on the night of the election was threaten- 
ed. There is no kind of worry that has not been tried ; 
they have persecuted even the very smallest people ; road- 
keepers, for instance, had their salary suspended. In 
one district nuns were distributing medical remedies to 
the poor ; the state has enjoined them from doing it, in 
order to worry the mayor of the town. The mortgage- 
recorder had an errand-boy, and this boy had been seen 
distributing circulars of the new candidate. The record- 
er received a letter from the prefect ordering him to 
discharge this boy within twenty-four hours." 

A¥e stop quoting more instances of this French admin- 
istrative system, which is more or less in force all over 
the European continent. The recent debates in the 
French parliament have exposed the almost incredible 
despotism of the judiciary branch of the French state. 
Let us mention only one case. 

16 



AND THE COLONIAL FAILURE 

The Swiss government — known since the Franco-Ger- 
man war for its socialistic tendencies — with characteris- 
tic bureaucratic carelessness, requests by telegraph the 
French government to arrest in Paris one Martouray, 
a Frenchman, whom it accuses of having sold certain 
forged bonds, on a specified day, to a banker in Lausanne. 
Without any inquiry the French government complies 
with the Swiss request. Martouray is found at once in 
Paris, thrown into jail, and kept there for days without 
being able to communicate with anybody ; for no inves- 
tigation of criminal charges is public anywhere on the 
European continent — it must be done under ^^ secret 
criminal proceedings." The unhappy man appeals in 
vain to the state, and asks to be allowed to summon at 
once some witnesses. The French Republican state does 
not even allow him to see an attorney, a friend, or a mem- 
ber of his family. Martouray, wild with despair, com- 
mits suicide in his cell. Hardly has he done this when 
the Swiss government finds out that it has made a mis- 
take, that Martouray is not wanted at all ; and the French 
authorities, upon investigation, find that the man had 
not been out of Paris for ten years, and that he had 
never been in Switzerland. 

This incident led to a violent explosion in the French 
parliament on the 6th of April, 1897. The opposition 
took advantage of it to attack the government for its con- 
stant outrages against individual freedom, which happen 
almost daily under the law allowing such secret proceed- 
ings. With the usual virulence of language so charac- 
teristic of French parliaments, a certain M. Dutreix ad- 
dressed the Minister of Justice, who sits in the House on 
the government bench. 

'^ You are the man who killed Martouray V he ex- 
claims. The French Minister of Justice then rises be- 
B 17 



THE CONTINENTAL SYSTEM 

fore the House. "No, M. Dutreix/' says he ; "I have 
not killed Martouray ; for the French government has 
immediately made a complaint to the Swiss government, 
after finding out the mistake. It is really unfair to ac- 
cuse the government of having been the cause of this 
unhappy event of wMcJi the government is eiitiy'ely in- 
nocent." 

Another member of the opposition rose and testified 
that the government refused to communicate the docu- 
ments containing the request of the Swiss authorities. 
A violent scene followed, the opposition hurling its ana- 
themas — evidently not without good reason this time — at 
the representatives of the state. Then the Speaker re- 
stored order, and the matter stopped there. 
. As a member of the British parliament. Sir Charles 
Dilke, recently said in a debate in the House of Commons 
on the repressive measures taken lately in India, the let- 
tres de cachet of the old French monarchy still exist in 
France, and no improvement has been made in the judi- 
ciary criminal proceedings of the French state since the 
Bastille was destroyed. A French magistrate, in the 
French Eepublic, may keep an innocent person in prison 
for weeks and months, without allowing the accused per- 
son to communicate with anybody, not even an attorney. 
This statute is in force in continental republics as well 
as in continental monarchies ; and, notwithstanding the 
disgraceful, ignoble disclosures made in the French 
courts of justice since Martouray^s case, when several 
other such cases were revealed, the French people — that 
so-called "liberty-loving nation," that claims to have 
taught freedom to the world — keeps on its statute-books 
regulations similar to those of Oriental despots. 

In G-ermany the system is still worse ; for there no op- 
position dares to attack the government so violently dur- 

18 



AND THE COLONIAL FAILURE 

ing a parliamentary debate. We shall have occasion 
later on to see what the civilization consists of that has 
been impressed on Germany by the German state ma- 
chine. 

The doctrine of the French state, with its unavoidable 
bureaucratic consequences, is well defined by Taine in 
the following sarcastic lines : * 

*' The state has made its statutes for an 'average 
Frenchman' — that is, for a fictitious citizen so restrict- 
ed and reduced in size that nowhere can the statute 
fit real, living men. With its legislative pair of scissors, 
at one stroke it has cut out on one single pattern, in 
the same cloth, thirty-six thousand copies of the same 
coat ; and this same coat must now fit every commune 
(county), whatever its natural size may be. The coat 
is too small for a city, too large for a village ; in both 
cases it is not appropriate, and is condemned beforehand 
as a misfit ; for it does not fit the large bodies nor the 
small ones. But as it was sent from Paris, we have had 
to put it on and live in it ; and we have lived in it the 
best we could, every one in such a coat having no better 
one at hand. Hence, for every one in particular, very 
strange attitudes ! And for general appearance of the 
mass, such wonderful effects as neither the governors 
nor the governed had ever expected to see !" 

Thus the continental nations have gradually lost their 
political health, through being taught for generations to 
believe that the state, a fictitious entity, an abstract con- 
ception of the brain, can act, think, and provide much 
better than the individual man, merely by appointing 
functionaries of all sorts. Under the pretence that the 
state can think more judiciously than men of flesh and 

Le Regime Moderne, p. 414. 
19 



THE CONTINENTAL SYSTEM 

blood, the state must educate, teach, transport, and man- 
ufacture. It is supposed that its divine wisdom will 
enable it to perform such duties much better than pri- 
vate citizens, or firms whose own interests are never- 
theless much more at stake than those of a vast anony- 
mous, omnipotent corporation, always able to exact money 
and compel obedience. Then when the illusory results 
of the doctrine are found out, general discontent follows ; 
but individual man, having lost all political business hab- 
its, finds himself not only unable to bear wrongs any long- 
er, but also unable to reform, to redress, and to repair. 

No particular form of government is responsible for 
the disastrous results of state paternalism. This is 
shown by the fact that little Switzerland, who tried to 
adopt the American constitution in 1848, has reached 
the same results as her more powerful neighbors. Her 
case may be of some interest to American readers, be- 
cause, although Switzerland borrowed its federal con- 
stitution from the United States, yet, being accustomed 
for centuries to invest the state with omnipotent author- 
ity, she declined to adopt the judiciary safeguards exist- 
ing in the United States, to limit this arbitrary power. 
As there is no supreme court in Switzerland, the Swiss 
state, like the French or Prussian state, constantly in- 
creasing its attributes under the pretence of fostering 
the public weal, always anxious to retain and increase 
its own authority, practically controls its much-governed 
population. This country is so unimportant to-day in 
the world's progress that nobody takes the trouble to 
investigate its present condition ; nevertheless, revolu- 
tionary methods had to be resorted to during this cen- 
tury in almost every state of the Swiss confederacy. 
The last disturbance happened a few years ago in the 
canton of Tessin, where federal troops had to restore 

SO 



AND THE COLONIAL FAILURE 

order, and where, during revolutionary riots, tlie chief 
executive was murdered by the mob. The reason why 
the little republic has now reached more or less the same 
condition as its neighbors, where socialism is a constant 
menace to civilization, may be seen in the following 
statement made by one of the leading Swiss dailies : 

" One of the great obstacles against which Swiss trade 
has to contend,^' says the Journal of Geneva (July 10, 
1897), "is the constant mischief done by our cavilling 
state, by its pretensions, and the slowness with which it 
fulfils the duties which were intrusted by the people to 
the government. Yet the administration was established 
for the public benefit ; it was under this plea that the 
management of so many public interests was handed 
over to the state. But public administration here has 
thrown off all allegiance to the laws of trade ; to-day it 
has no other aim than to collect money ; for public ad- 
ministration is a branch of our state, and our state has 
two faces. It is a social organ, and consequently the 
servant of the people ; but it is also the supreme au- 
thority ; and those who represent the Swiss state are 
fatally led to give a predominating importance to au- 
thority and power. Formerly we had in Switzerland a 
very simple administration only, which was carried on 
at very little expense. . . . but we have now reached a 
point where the state, made too powerful, has lost its 
contact with the people, where it has forgotten why it 
was established, and where it works only to attain its 
own ends. The Commercial Bulletin has lately shown, 
for instance, how we were at the mercy of the state in 
all matters relating to claims against the custom-house ; 
and how, after a citizen has gone through all perform- 
ances dictated by red-tape, he finds finally, at the end of 
the administrative ladder, for a judge his own adver- 

31 



THE CONTINENTAL SYSTEM 

sary, the federal executive ; in other words, fiscal au- 
thority itself. It is simply monstrous that there should 
be in Switzerland no neutral authority, no judiciary 
body, to decide those daily and constant quarrels be- 
tween the state and the citizens. All the pretended im- 
provements so much in vogue to-day in the federal 
government's bureaus have no other effect than to in- 
crease daily the power and the attributes of the admin- 
istration. They want to '^ nationalize ' our railroads, 
and to transform them also, like everything else, into 
an instrument of taxation. Before following such a 
policy, it were wise for us to introduce in our state 
management reforms of which the public feels more and 
more the urgent need ; it were wise to infuse into our 
public administration a new spirit of modesty and sim- 
plicity, to remind it that individual citizens have some 
rights ; in one word, it were wise to make our state un- 
derstand that in a well-organized democratic republic, 
the state should not be the master, but the servant, of 
the people." 

The result of this despotism of the state has been the 
rapid increase of socialism in the Swiss Kepublic. So- 
cialists, formerly unknown as a political factor, now 
play an important role in the country. The German- 
Swiss politicians having imported the nefarious German 
policy of increasing all the functions of the state, at a 
heavy expense to the classes who pay taxes, the results 
are the same as in the other state-ridden countries of 
the Continent.* 

* The Imperial German Gazette of July 8, 1897, contains, for 
instance, the regulations lately issued by the German government 
for the sale of Professor Koch's new tuberculin, under which name 
the new specific will be sold by chemists and druggists, in phials 
containing one millilitre at 8.50 marks, and in phials containing 

23 



AND THE COLONIAL FAILURE 

The Commercial Bulletin of Geneva expressed this 
Tinsatisfactory condition of affairs as follows, in an edi- 
torial styled '^Too Much Government": *MVe have in 
Switzerland a public administration before which any 
citizen who is obliged to apply to it feels that there 
is no hope in struggling, and that he is vanquished 
beforehand. He may have justice, right, and even 
the law on his side, but he knows that he is practi- 
cally powerless, thanks to the red-tape, to administra- 
tive complications, to dilatory measures, and to 'in- 
terpretations ' which block his road. With us in 
Switzerland, '^ f unctionarism ' and bureaucracy are *in 
full bloom. The bureaucratic machine is fully organ- 
five mlllilitres at 42.50 marks. And the tuberculin will be sold 
only to diplomaed medical men possessing a state certificate. Thus 
the German state, under the pretence of promoting the "welfare of 
the people, regulates the price, the form of packing, and the use of 
a remedy. In Switzerland this German tendency of allowing the 
state to control all activity has taken a strong foothold, for the 
wise restrictions to federal omnipotence existing in the United 
States were left out when the form of the American constitution 
was adopted. The acts of the Swiss congress cannot be overruled 
by the Swiss supreme court — or "Federal Court," as it is called. 
This court can only overrule acts of cantonal, or "state," legisla- 
tures. The result is that a socialist majority in the Swiss congress 
could, as in France, abolish property, and tax only the rich ; and 
a reactionary majority could abolish the liberty of the press, or 
restrict it, and pass a bill under which trial by jury would be 
abolished and socialists hanged for high treason. This is the con- 
dition of things to which the United States would be reduced if 
the American Populistic platform were adopted, abolishing the 
American supreme court, and creating an omnipotent state. Hap- 
pily for Switzerland, the old mediaeval statute of the referendum — 
the veto of acts of congress by the people — under which so many 
bad laws passed by the parliament are defeated, is stilL checking 
somewhat the paternal Swiss state ; but this does not check the 
influence of Swiss bureaucrac}'' and growing federal patronage. 

33 



THE CONTINENTAL SYSTEM 

ized ; the functionary who stands on the lower step of 
the long administrative ladder, executes punctually the 
order coming from above ; then he goes further ; he 
^scents' what his superior wishes, and he is most care- 
ful not to contradict him or to interfere with his inten- 
tions. Very well ! But of what use, then, are all appeals 
to functionaries, and where is the citizen who can ever 
undertake a struggle when caught in the clutches of 
this machine ?" 

A French writer, M. Arsene Dumont, in his book. 
Depopulation and Civilization, expresses again a similar 
feeling. ''Every administration,^' says he, "wishes to 
extend its functions, for the very reason that it exists. 
It wishes to have more employes, to be better paid, 
and to be more respected. The citizen becomes then 
an enemy who can never be bound and fettered enough ; 
who must be governed, commanded, and overcome; who 
must be entwined in an inextricable network of red- 
tape, so as to feel worn out and defeated ; so that 
when he is at last tired out by the struggle, justice 
may be granted him as a grace, and right as a real 
favor.'' 

If one wishes to understand the causes which produced 
this condition on the Continent, one must look at the 
past history of France and Germany, not at the printed 
form of their present constitutions. Was not feudal, 
aristocratic England the mother of all the free English- 
speaking nations, whose control of civilization is already 
assured to-day, as we remarked before ? And was not 
democratic France the hotbed of despotic authority, and 
the classical field of bloody revolutions during the last 
hundred years ? Of what use are printed constitutions 
if the state controls the population, if the citizens have 
become political children or dummies unable to control 

24 



AND THE COLONIAL FAILURE 

and overrule their agents ; how can the national estate 
thrive if the owner retires and goes to sleep during many- 
years, after empowering the manager, the agent, to act as 
he pleases, to engage in foolish ventures, to spend all the 
cash, mortgage the property, and keep him practically 
under lock and key ? What difference does it make if 
this estate is a republican sheep and cattle farm, or a 
monarchical vineyard ? 

"What these different managers, these agents, have done 
for their owners, how they have ruined their political 
destinies, and how these owners have persistently refused 
to this day to redeem their political fortune, till they 
have become unfit to distinguish political prosperity from 
political misery and theatrical display, this is what con- 
tinental history shows us. 

That these national European estates are practically 
bankrupt, as the military mortgage and its enormous 
burdens show, all admit ; that continental colonial activ- 
ity in all parts of the world, represented by the ludi- 
crous figure of three hundred and fifty thousand settlers 
after centuries of warfare, is nothing but military and 
chauvinistic display, the statistics show. But the con- 
nection between state paternalism and the political de- 
cadence of continental civilization is perhaps not enough 
appreciated. A few glimpses into the past may help us 
to understand this present inferiority of continental 
Europe in comparison with the gigantic strides of the 
English-speaking nations. 



CHAPTER II 

THE MEDIEVAL COMMOKWEALTH 

DuEiKG the Middle Ages this domain which the own- 
ers were going to abandon gradually to their agent, '^ the 
state/" was still nntilled, and in a wild condition. The 
owners themselves, the freemen, the descendants of the 
old Germanic invaders, were performing all the adminis- 
trative, judiciary, and military work. On the ruins of 
the old Eoman civilization, in all parts of Europe, there 
had sprung up a new political and social system, the 
same everywhere, almost unintelligible to us modern men 
who have forgotten its past usefulness, and who remem- 
ber only the comparatively modern and very fatal con- 
sequences of monarchical usurpation. This new system, 
which extended over all Europe during eight centuries 
and more, was the old feudal compact ; and what char- 
acterized this feudal organization was the fact that the 
freemen had not yet transferred .their rights to any cen- 
tral authority. They exercised them themselves ; for 
there was as yet no absolute monarchy, no omnipotent 
state. 

Germanic kingship was originally a constitutional 
kingship, with very limited power ; a mere elective presi- 
dency at first, which by degrees became hereditary ; as in 
Germany, for instance, where the delegates of the nation 

26 



THE MEDIEVAL COMMONWEALTH 

— the prince electors — continued during many centuries 
to elect the Germanic king, or Kaiser. In early times 
any freeman could be elected king ; just as any native 
citizen of the United States can become president. Thus 
a very poor Swiss knight, one Hapsburg, became Em- 
peror of G-ermany, having been duly elected to the office ; 
truly a mediaeval "dark horse.'' 

" He shall be born from free parents/' says the old 
Germanic law ; " he must not be lame, but an able-bodied 
man"; for the king was the war chief. He could make 
no laws himself ; that was the business of the mediseval 
parliament ;* among the Franks and the Longobards, for 
a long time, no law was valid unless it had been ratified 
by the people ; f a statute which exists still in modern 
Switzerland, where any act of the national congress must 
be referred to the people whenever thirty thousand citi- 
zens sign a petition to that effect. 

Nor could a freeman be judged by the king or his 

* These parliaments are designated in the contemporary records 
as placita, conventus, concilia, or synodi. The first documentary 
evidences we have of such congresses appear in the sixth century. 
Later, these assemblies received the name of Parliament in England, 
;]&tats Generaux in France, and Reichstag in Germany. 

f The decisions which had to have a legal force had to be an- 
nounced to the people at the place of assembly, and their consent 
obtained {acclamatio). The fact that this consent was obtained is 
especially mentioned in the edicts promulgating the laws. This 
appeal to the people to obtain its consent is called in the records 
'* IntenTogatio 'po'puli" It is embodied in the charter, or Capitulariiy 
of Charlemagne, who ruled over France and Germany. This co- 
operation of the people was even necessary among the Longobards 
for all decisions of the king sitting with the counts in judiciary 
matters. ''Sed nobis et nostris judicihus atque Longohardis adstan- 
tibus jiistum comparuit." (Zoepfl. Deutsclw RecJitsgescMclite.) The 
publicity of trials ordered by modern law in constitutional coun- 
tries is a relic of the old feudal safeguards. 

37 



THE MEDIEVAL COMMONWEALTH 

agents ; he conld be sentenced only on a verdict of Ms 
peers. Hence the old feudal institution of the jury, kept 
up in England with all the other mediaeval safeguards 
against the omnipotence of the state, long after they had 
been suppressed by continental monarchs. 

" The old English government/' says Macaulay, " was 
one of a class of limited monarchies which sprang up in 
western Europe during the Middle Ages, and which, not- 
withstanding many diversities, bore to one another a 
strong family likeness. That there should have been 
such a likeness is not strange. The countries in which 
these monarchies arose had been provinces of the same 
great empire, and had been overrun and conquered about 
the same time by tribes of the same rude and warlike na- 
tion. They were members of the same great coalition 
against Islam; they were in communion with the same 
superb and ambitious church ; their polity naturally took 
the same form. They had institutions partly derived from 
imperial Eome, partly from old Germany. All had kings, 
and in all the kingly office became by degrees strictly he- 
reditary. All had nobles bearing titles which had origin- 
ally indicated military rank. The dignity of knighthood, 
the rules of heraldry, were common to all. All had rich- 
ly endowed ecclesiastical establishments, municipal cor- 
porations enjoying large franchises, and senates whose 
consent was necessary to the validity of some public 
acts. . . . No English king has ever laid claim to the 
legislative power. The most violent and imperious Plan- 
tagenet never fancied himself competent to enact with- 
out the consent of his great council that a jury should 
consist of ten persons instead of twelve, that a widow's 
part should be a fourth part instead of a third, that per- 
jury should be a felony. . . . That the king could not 
impose taxes without the consent of Parliament is admit- 

28 



THE MEDIEVAL COMMONAVEALTH 

ted to have been from time immemorial a fundamental 
law." — History of England, 

How the nation abdicated its rights, transferred them 
gradually to an absolute and central authority, the new 
*^ monarch," and how the rights of the absolute monarch 
were transferred to the modern absolute state, constitute 
all the political history of the European continent dur- 
ing the last four or five centuries. England, who kept 
the old feudal organization, and transformed it only by 
extending the rights of the freemen or Germanic con- 
querors to all men, has no paternal state. But on the 
Continent, where the rights of the freemen — the descend- 
ants of the old conquerors — were transferred to a central 
authority, state despotism ensued, and has subsisted un- 
der different forms to this day. In other words, the old 
feudal liberties were expanded in England, till every 
Englishman enjoyed all the guarantees of life and prop- 
erty owned by the medieval lord ; on the Continent 
they were contracted till they had all been gathered into 
the hands of one or a few men, the old freemen, the 
nobility, being gradually reduced to the condition of 
the former conquered people, the serfs, with no political 
rights at all. 

Thus have the citizens of an American "county" in- 
herited the rights and privileges of the mediaeval *' count "; 
and the American county organization, simply by the ex- 
tension of the count^s authority to the people, remains to 
this day a vestige of feudal organization more than ten 
centuries old ; like the right of the Spanish grandee, de- 
scendant of the old Visigoths, to remain covered before 
the king, his peer and military leader. 

As a matter of fact, our count or baron was rather a 
rough personage, whose animal spirits cropped out every- 
where. His hand was a steel-gloved hand ; the justice 

29 



THE MEDIAEVAL COMMONWEALTH 

he administered to all, without the help of learned attor- 
neys, was generally of rather a summary nature — a sort 
of single-handed lynch law, regulated by the feudal 
statutes which governed all Europe, and were almost the 
same in England and in Spain, in Erance and in Germany. 
Let the reader remember what kind of life mankind 
led in Europe after the death of Charlemagne, '' the 
mediaeval European president,'^ or " constitutional feudal 
king," during whose reign two congresses used to assem- 
ble every year.* The Saracens, coming from Africa bent 
on destroying Christendom, had conquered the greater 
part of Spain and . half of modern Erance ; they were 
plundering Sicily and the Italian shores ; they had pene- 
trated into Switzerland, and kept a foothold for almost a 
century near the Alps on the banks of the Rhone. The 
Magyars, or Hungarians, were making inroads into Ger- 
many and Italy ; the ^Normans, the Scandinavian vikings, 
were desolating northern Erance, the English coasts, and 
landing freebooters in Italy and in Sicily. The waves of 
tempestuous humanity caused by the sinking of the Ro- 
man Empire, rolled to and fro without defined limits. No 
settled, permanent geographical boundaries existed for 
any nation ; every land was at the mercy of any daring 
adventurer who could plunder and destroy at the head 
of a few thousand bold followers. Times were such that, 
according to the Spanish chronicles, ''no knight or baron 

* Under Charlemagne there were regularly two congresses every 
year ; a general congress, or real parliament, in spring, at the time 
of the Campus Martins, and a smaller assembly in autumn {con- 
cilium seniorum et concilium praecipuoi'um) to prepare the meas- 
ures which had to be submitted to llie next assembly. The oldest 
constitutional charter of Europe is the charter of the Frankish 
kingdom which Clotar H. was obliged to grant in 614. (Zoepfl. 
Deutsclie Bechtsgescldchte.) 

SO 



THE MEDIEVAL COMMONWEALTH 

sleeps in his castle witbont keej^ing the horses saddled 
near the hall where he lies/^ 

This situation produced after a while a new state of 
things. Europe was in such chaos after Charlemagne's 
death that, in the absence of a central authority strong- 
enough to interfere successfully, the descendants of the 
old invaders, the petty rulers who were permanently set- 
tled on their estates, took it upon themselves to protect 
their own and their vassals' property. Every count, 
every baron, fought for himself and those who v/ere ^^his 
people." Those towns, those villages, those valleys 
which were being devastated belonged to him and to the 
people who toiled for him and for themselves. Besides, 
the lords and the vassals, the descendants of the con- 
querors and the conquered, having lived side by side for 
a few generations and acquired common interests, had 
become friendly to each other. Thus in England the 
Norman barons and freemen, and the Saxon vassals and 
serfs, finally formed a league against the unconstitution- 
al encroachments of the crown. At last, when a count 
or baron fell under the battle-axes of a common eneni}'', 
a general cry of sorrow and anguish went wp from the 
people, and they mourned for him as their best protector 
and friend. If he returned victorious from the battle, 
they all praised his courage and his skill, even to exag- 
geration, and he was welcomed home with joy. Eor the 
peasant who knew by experience the dangers that threat- 
ened himself, his wife, his daughters, his cattle, his crop, 
and his humble straw - thatched home, and who, born 
from a less energetic Gallic or Latin race, now knew 
little enough about fighting, this peasant grew finally to 
consider his lord as his born protector. '^Did not that 
man, with only a score of well-chosen hired followers, 
mount his good horse, ride day and night in his heavy 

31 



THE MEDIEVAL COMMONWEALTH 

steel armor, and, undeterred by the number and terrific 
appearance of those foreign devils, charge lance in rest 
on their ugly pikes ? Did he not, at a single stroke of 
that great sword, split the head of their leader — the vil- 
lain that was going to burn our homes and kill us all ? 
Did he not come back with his own head half broken, 
bleeding and bandaged, smiling as if this had been 'all 
fun/ and swear before God, the Holy Virgin, and the 
saints, that no foreign robber should ever get out of 
his county alive T' 

Look at the manner in which he lives ! In that great 
hall of the castle yonder, on the height overlooking the 
valley, he gathers at night his friends and faithful fol- 
lowers, and they sit around the massive oak table. In 
the gigantic fireplace, large enough to roast an ox whole 
— ^like those still to be seen in mediaeval castles that 
have remained standing to this day — the glowing trunk 
of a tree is roasting a hundred-weight of meat. Venison 
is plentiful, for the boundless forests are still full of 
deer ; plentiful too is the wine made yonder in the hill- 
side vineyards, and the beer — a sour beer brewed at 
home in a primitive way ! There they all sit — much like 
the men of Homer — using their hunting-knives in place 
of forks, hungry as wolves after the day^s hunt. They 
drink out of the big horn — for glass is costly, and hard- 
ly known — which the page, old John^s or old Peter's 
brightest boy admitted to serve here, carries around 
among the guests. The benches are of oak, hard to sit 
on, uncomfortable enough to later generations. On the 
walls, twelve or fifteen feet thick, hang no pictures, but 
massive trophies of famous hunts and weapons that have 
been well borne. Here hangs the shield which our 
lord's grandfather — whom the old people in the village- 
still remember — brought back from the Crusade; and 

33 



THE MEDIEVAL COMMONWEALTH 

here the sword of that Hungarian warrior who would 
have killed Sir Charles when he was with his duke in 
Italy, if old Tom, who sits at table now, white-haired, 
half drunk and sleepy, had not rushed like a faithful vas- 
sal to his lord^s rescue. Old Tom can eat and drink as 
much as he pleases now, for he is too old to look after 
the dogs and falcons. He was born in the village, and 
when still a boy he followed Sir Charles to the wars of 
King Louis. His sons are away now with our lord^s 
eldest son, campaigning with the King against the Nor- 
man robbers who are besieging Paris again. Listen to 
this story of old Sir Hugh, who was in so many hard 
fights ! They all talk of war and hunting, for they 
know nothing else. They empty many horns ! All that 
they know of the world they have learned with their own 
eyes, or have been told by the old men. There sits the 
priest too, who lives near the chapel of the castle, a self- 
made man whose father was only a beggar. He is won- 
derfully educated, being able to read and write, all in 
Latin, while we can only sign with a cross or with our 
seal. There are no books here, except one massive 
prayer-book bound in thick leather, written by hand, 
with painted illustrations by the monks in the convent 
yonder across the mountain. 

All these men wear buckskin and leather, and none of 
them, not even the count, owns a shirt. But the coun- 
tess and her women, maids born in the valley, weave 
some linen and wool for themselves, and even fine tapes- 
tries which adorn the walls or are preserved in the fine 
carved chests of their room. None of these people have 
any knowledge of handkerchiefs ; they do not know 
what sugar is, nor tea, nor coffee ; nor have they ever 
seen a potato or an ear of Indian corn. Centuries will 
elapse before their descendants hear of tobacco. There 
c 33 



THE MEDIEVAL COMMONWEALTH 

is no glass in the windows ; in cold weather the open- 
ings are closed with shutters and with skins. The beds 
are simply bags filled with feathers or wool. At night 
torches, tallow candles, or lamps filled with lard oil, throw 
their Inrid and smoky light on the walls, leaving the hall 
in a gloomy semi-obscurity. 

Thus lived the most privileged class of the mediaeval 
community, with no intellectual occupation, no knowl- 
edge whatever of the universe nor of the shape of the 
world ; with no other refining influence than the Latin 
prayers of the monk and the occasional appearance of a 
minstrel who would perhaps recite some verses on the 
death of Eoland, or the slaughter of a seven -headed 
dragon, or about a beautiful lady pining away in a prison 
for her favored knight. If the privileged class lived 
thus, generation after generation, imagine how the com- 
mon people lived ! 

But still this is the bright side of mediasval life, for 
the improvement was great after the strong castle with 
its massive towers and battlements had been built. Sir 
Charles, for instance, bade all the vassals, under penalty 
of being hanged or beaten to death, to cart up moun- 
tains of building - stone and lime ; and since he made 
this pile of masonry, everything is already better in life. 
Before Sir Charles's time, when the foreign raiders in- 
vaded the valley, they killed the count, his hired fight- 
ing-men, and three-fourths of the population ; they out- 
raged the girls and young women, tortured farmers who 
had concealed their corn, burned down every dwelling, 
and drove away all the horses, cattle, and sheep. It took 
half a century before the new people succeeded in re- 
claiming the land, draining the marshes again, and clear- 
ing the long-abandoned fields. When the next war came, 
the castle having been built by Sir Charles, we all took 

34 



THE MEDIEVAL COMMONWEALTH 

refuge in it, penning the cattle and the horses near the 
well in the yard and under the walls. Then during the 
long siege the invaders tried in vain to storm the castle ; 
everybody gave a helping hand to Sir Charles, and all 
those who could fight stood by him ; with the result 
that his duke or his king at last came to the rescue, as 
by the feudal statute he was bound to do ; and the raid- 
ers, for the most part, remained only to fatten the ground 
with their corpses. 

Such was the condition of medissval Europe for many 
centuries after the death of Charlemagne, when his 
European empire fell to pieces. ^^Not to be killed/'' 
says Stendhal, '''and to own a good suit of leather 
in winter, was the greatest happiness for most people 
in the tenth century.^' 

G-radually times grew better, under the influence of 
the great law which compels mankind to march forward, 
not backward, and which has driven us onward even 
from the cave-dwellings of the Stone Age. New towns 
and cities slowly grew up — new cities which owed their 
prosperity, not to the old prestige of the former Eoman 
civilization, but to new mediaeval wants and trading 
habits. The people's activity had not been crushed ; 
certain points of mediaaval Europe were becoming 
centres of trade, and then bargains began to be made 
between the lord and the town, satisfactory and useful 
to both, and of much importance to future freedom; 
for Count Charles, for instance, or Duke Louis, needing 
money to defend the province and raise a new com- 
pany of archers, applied to his vassals in a certain town. 
Are they not under feudal obligation to pay him yearly 
so much of what they earn by trade ? Could they not, 
since it is for their interest as well as his to protect the 
province, furnish him with ten or twenty times this 

35 



THE MEDIEVAL COMMONWEALTH 

amount in one lump ? And our gracions duke or count, 
well aware that he could not find and steal their well- 
hidden coin, scattered in a thousand secret places, will- 
ingly and "generously" offers to let the burghers im- 
port certain useful staples free of duty to him forever. 
Upon which the burghers, having met and discussed 
this grave question, appoint "Messire Peter" or "Mes- 
sire John" to bargain with our gracious lord — with 
secret instructions to keep his eyes well open and to 
" get all he can." 

Thus commercial centres sprang up everywhere: Frank- 
fort, Antwerp, Ghent, Cologne, Florence, Paris, Lyons, 
Bordeaux, and many new seaports. With comparative 
safety for life and merchandise, these centres of human 
industry soon threw their shining light far away into the 
country. Now, over all the Mediterranean Sea Venetian 
ships are sailing from the forlorn lagoons off the main- 
land where once a few fishermen and their families had 
taken refuge from the Huns. They import fine Eastern 
wares manufactured by the accursed infidels who have 
kept Jerusalem. We could not succeed in expelling 
them from the Holy Land, nor in cutting all their throats ; 
let us trade with them now and make some money out of 
them. Genoese fishermen, good sailors too, follow this 
example, for it pays better to trade in the fine silkwares 
that all noble ladies have learned to admire than to catch 
fish. Even little Amalfi, near Naples, now a small sea- 
port, reverted to primitive poverty, and a score of other 
fishermen's villages plunge into commercial and shipping 
activity. And the more money they make, the more 
rights they purchase from our noble lord, till finally they 
have bought all the rights that are worth purchasing. 

In the provinces also, away from the growing cities, a 
change is taking place. Formerly we were all so poor, 

86 



THE MEDIAEVAL COMMONAVE ALTH 

duke and count, knight, abbot, monk, farmer, and peas- 
ant, that we lived like miserable people. Peace has im- 
proved matters ; but the world, although becoming wiser, 
has a great deal to learn yet. When crops are good we 
all have enough, eating much wheat, barley, and meat ; 
but when the crops are poor, one-quarter, or perhaps one- 
half, of the population goes hungry to bed every night ; 
for when food is abundant nobody can sell his surplus, 
the roads being bad and transportation long and perilous 
on account of thieves of all classes. Salt is scarce and 
high-priced for preserving meats, for it has to travel far 
on ox-carts, and there is a tax on it — the French gabelle. 
There was a time when even kings — the Merovingians, 
travelling around to preside at judiciary courts, regular 
circuit courts, in fact — had to go on ox-carts like nine- 
teenth-century Africanders. But this mode of transporta- 
tion is now happily reserved for merchandise, breadstuffs, 
and other bulky wares. Very possibly we may have to 
fight on the road for our purse and life, when we travel'on 
horseback from one province to another in company with 
other merchants, or of pilgrims walking, staff in hand, 
to Italy or the Ehine. But even robbers have not an 
easy time at this period ; for should we overpower them 
we will deliver them to the count's officers, or to the 
next city constable ; and their limbs will be broken piece- 
meal in the market-square, and their heads stuck at the 
town-ga.te on an iron post made expressly for the purpose, 
as a warning to all that highway robbery, being a curse 
to traffic, must finally be stopped. We shall have to put 
up for centuries yet with epidemics, the " black plague/' 
and the like, caused by filth, famine, and foul water — 
as in Florence, where two-thirds of the inhabitants died 
in one year; but the people nevertheless are seeing the 
dawn of better days. 

37 



THE MEDIEVAL COMMONWEALTH 

Bishops, abbots, and priests have during all these 
times fared better than anybody else. They were not ex- 
posed to cruel treatment, were well housed, well clothed, 
and well fed ; they needed no weapons for defence, their 
persons being sacred to all men, high and low. With all 
its vices and crimes, its hypocrisy, cruelty, and greed, the 
church was not always what it became in later centuries, 
a stumbling-block to progress, an instrument of demoral- 
ization whose deadly work only the Eeformation could 
stop. In early times it had a civilizing influence on lords 
and vassals. Its ranks were open to all classes ; it offer- 
ed a ray of hope for the poor and low-born, to whom suc- 
cess in life was becoming more difficult as Europe became 
more settled. Wealth was almost unknown ; the modern 
money power did not exist, and no man of low birth 
could offset a lord's authority by making money in busi- 
ness ; but a poor Saxon swine-herd, one Nicholas Break- 
spear, who had belonged to the despised race in England, 
held out his foot, while seated on the Papal throne, to 
the noble ambassadors of the King of England. Bishops 
and abbots often overruled barons, dukes, and kings. 

Crude and rude as it was — almost monstrous as it 
seems to-day — this feudal system was really based on 
more solid foundations than we commonly think; and 
the proof of it is that it lasted a thousand years. A sys- 
tem based on despotic brutality, be it legal or illegal, can 
never last long, for, like all wrongs, it carries in itself the 
seeds of its own destruction. But the feudal system, 
with its wild and primitive methods of regulating the 
rights and duties of man to man, its foundation of local 
home rule and individual rights for freemen, stood the 
wear and tear of centuries. All the Anglo-American 
liberties were transmitted through it ; all the state despot- 
ism of the continental monarchies of Europe came from 

88 



THE MEDIEVAL COMMONWEALTH 

their suppression. Some of the noblest virtnes of the 
human heart, devotion to duty, self-respect, bravery on 
the part of the leaders, patience, honesty, and faithful- 
ness on the part of the masses, were the indispensable, 
unwritten conditions of the system. These conditions 
engraved in men's hearts ensured its long life. It gave 
rise to many abuses; nevertheless, at the time when it 
was introduced it was the most practical political system 
to apply, and it remained in force on the Continent as 
long as it was true to its principles of local home rule in 
opposition to the system of central state government. 
Under the pressure of natural laws it soon lost much of 
its harshness ; serfdom, for instance, disappeared in Eng- 
land without ever having been abolished by statute.* 

Indeed, what use to a man are fifty thousand acres of 
land, be it the richest in France, unless the settlers co- 
operate with the owner in cultivating it ? Is not the 
willing co-operation of labor the indispensable, tacit con- 
dition of prosperous landlordism in all parts of the world ? 
And unless the tillers of the soil, be they tenants, serfs, ^ 
or vassals, be protected from devastation and robbery, ^ 
what crops will be raised — what wealth can the owner 
acquire ? If some kind of mutual compromise between 
the conqueror and the population is not soon reached, 
how can the land be improved, roads made, and bridges 
built ? How can villages and towns be enlarged, or even 
protected from annihilation ? How can merchants im- 
port and export the staples, the wares necessary to all ? 
How can manufacturers establish shops and train work- 
men to make good cloth or leather ? Can the lord afford 
to sit behind the walls of his castle with a troop of hired 
soldiers, and have no other occupation than a raid on his 



* Macaulay. History of England. 
89 



THE MEDIEVAL COMMONWEALTH 

neighbor's estate or the destruction of his own vassals' 
lives and property, which are the basis of his wealth ? 
If the tiller of the soil cannot be induced by promises of 
some kind of fair treatment to clear new land, raise more 
horses and cattle, and feel that he himself will be ben- 
efited by his work, what are the prospects of the med- 
iaeval duke or baron ? What are the prospects of their 
descendants, compelled by destiny to live in that district, 
just as their vassals, in some particular valley or hill-top 
of the world ? If there were no more hope for the vassal 
than there is in a tread-mill, no possibility of improving 
his condition by economy and work, nothing but blank 
despair in his heart, would he not give up his struggle for 
existence, disappear, die out ? 

Yet the conquered, the vassals, are overwhelmingly in 
the majority. When, many centuries later, in 1792, the 
people at last recognized the fact that French nobility 
had for generations forgotten its mission, and had become 
a useless, ridiculous institution, the number of persons 
of noble birth in France was only 140,000,* in a popula- 
tion of twenty millions. The Catholic clergy alone, who 
shared with the degenerate nobility those privileges un- 
der which the starving people groaned, numbered then 
130,000. All England was conquered and divided up by 
only 60,000 Normans. 

Mediaeval nobility had arduous tasks to perform in 
order to exist, many duties to fulfil. Its local interests — 
just the opposite of modern bureaucracy — were linked 
with the material interests of the vassals, whose pros- 
perity alone could insure the prosperity of their lords. 
What was called a privileged class, after the princes in 
Germany and the king in France had substituted cen- 

* Taine. L'Ancien Begime. 
40 



THE MEDIEVAL COMMONWEALTH 

tralized Asiatic despotism for home rule, was not during 
the Middle Ages a class that could afford to be idle. 
These men had duties, and they knew it. They had 
constantly to strain every nerve to avoid disaster. Every 
county relied upon the count to defend the interests of 
the commonwealth. Like a western American sheriff, 
he with his own hired men did much useful and risky 
work. The media3val baron never vanished, as did his 
French descendants in 1792, when his presence was 
needed. To this day the traces of the old bond between 
the lord and his people can be seen in many countries of 
Europe in the friendly but reverential relations still ex- 
isting between their descendants. 

In France, after the king had succeeded in reducing 
these formidable home- rulers to the role of a merely 
ornamental nobility, the degradation of the latter was 
a foregone conclusion. A privileged class fulfilling no t 
duties, transformed into a group of vain and pretentious j 
flunkeys living at Versailles as fashionable beggars, could ! 
not exist long without being a curse to mankind. Hence 
the hatred and the fully deserved contempt that this 
perversion of the system has inspired. In Germany the 
greater vassals gradually transformed their dukedoms 
into independent kingdoms, reducing the elective em- 
peror to a simple figurehead, and reducing the nobility, 
as in France, to the contemptible role which we shall see 
them play later on. Germanic kingship — to which the 
dignity of Emperor of the Romans had been added by 
the Pope — became finally a hereditary privilege of the 
Hapsburg family, a mere decorative ofiice in the end, 
lasting to the time of Napoleon. The German princes, 
abolishing the old Germanic freemen^'s rights, became, 
like the French king, oriental despots. One of them, 
the Duke of Brandenburg, in 1701 converted his duke- 

41 



THE MEDIJ5VAL COMxMONWE ALTH 

dom into the Kingdom of Prussia, and thus became the 
leading monarch of Germany. The people had lost all 
rights^ even the old Germanic right to a trial by jury. 
And these oriental despots were the founders of the ab- 
solute monarchies whose omnipotence has been inherited 
by the modern continental '' state." 

In England the evolution of the system was in the 
other direction ; the nobility checked the king^s author- 
ity and gradually extended the conquerors' privileges to 
the people. Thus were insured the greatness of England 
and the political prosperity of all English-speaking coun- 
tries. This present prosperity shows what great possi- 
bilities existed for Europe in the mediaeval organization ; 
for the American people, changing the hereditary system 
of the organization for an elective one, yet without abol- 
ishing any of the safeguards of freedom and order, or the 
system of home rule and local authority, have preserved 
what French and German monarchs have destroyed. 

We all admit that the medigeval organization, the work 
of wild tribes not much more civilized than American 
Indians at the time when the great invasion of the Ko- 
man Empire took place, wonld by no means answer to 
the modern wants of a more refined community. It 
seems clear that the political worthlessness of the con- 
quered people did not warrant an extension of political 
rights. When one thinks that all Sicily and Naples were 
conquered by twenty-five or thirty Norman knights, led 
by Eobert Wiscard (Eobert the Wise), who established 
himself firmly in the country, the conquest of Mexico by 
Cortes does not surprise us so much. The very fact that a 
long-civilized, densely populated country like Sicily and 
southern Italy should allow itself to be conquered and 
governed by two or three dozens of armed knights shows 
how little the conquered race was entitled to the man- 

42 



THE MEDIEVAL COMMONWEALTH 

agement of public affairs. The invaders alone were free- 
men by law, and tliey alone deserved to have political 
rights ; for, according to Germanic ideas, freedom entail- 
ed not only rights, but duties, and the conquered people 
could not perform those duties. This old Germanic supe- 
riority over the Latin race has reappeared somewhat, 
though in a less marked degree, in California, Texas, 
Florida> and New Mexico, where the invading American 
settlers could not easily associate the natives in the man- 
agement of their county affairs. Nevertheless the medi- 
eval serfs were by no means slaves like the American 
negroes ; they could not be removed from the land, and 
they owned property. Gradually, the interests of the two 
classes being the same, serfdom practically disappeared 
long before the nobility ceased its political usefulness ; 
for feudal home rule had created a joint interest between 
the lord and the vassal. 

For this system, which was to be the foundation of 
Anglo-Saxon greatness, France and Germany substituted, 
as v/e said before, a truly Asiatic despotism, creating the 
paternal state of the European continent, with its subse- 
quent misrule, corruption, and degradation. Under the 
plea that the king and his advisers could conduct public 
business for the people better than the people themselves, 
home rule was abolished. The judiciary authority was tak- 
en away from the count and transferred to the central gov- 
ernment. In England and in America it was transferred 
to the people of the county. The first consequence in 
France and Germany was that individual liberty disap- 
peared ; for the agent of the state, the new judge sent by 
central authority, replaced the jury presided over by the 
count ; and being invested with this judiciary authority, 
he could imprison and sentence a man without being re- 
sponsible to anybody but his bureaucratic superior. Sub- 

43 



THE MEDIEVAL COMMONWEALTH 

sequently even the formality of judiciary proceedings be- 
fore imprisoning a man was omitted ; the French and 
German kings simply issued orders of arrest, and the ar- 
rested man remained in jail without a trial, sometimes for 
many years.* It is remarkable that within the last two 
years both G-ermany and France should have made use 
of the very same despotic authority. The German Em- 
peror used it in arresting without a trial (or kidnapping) 
his master of ceremonies, Baron Kotze, and in keeping 
him in jail for three months without taking the trouble 
even of a judiciary formality. This was done because 
the man had been reported by court gossip as the author 
of certain anonymous letters. And the French Republic 
used it in sentencing the captain of artillery, Dreyfus, to 
imprisonment for life in a penal colony, without any pub- 
lic accusation, without any public trial, without allowing 
the man a chance to communicate with anybody but 
state functionaries. The man was said to be accused of 
having sold some documents of the French War Depart- 
ment to the German ambassador in Paris. He was arrest- 
ed by the French state, brought before a committee of 
French officers supposed to represent a court-martial, and 
nobody was ever able to ascertain why these secret pro- 
ceedings ended in degradation and penal servitude for 
life. There is not a man in France, except two or three 
state functionaries, who knows on what evidence Dreyfus 
is buried for life in a lonely island prison. With such 
proceedings in the modern German Empire and in the 
modern French Eepublic, certainly no less tyrannical 
than the old lettres de cachet which sent men to the 



* Everybody has heard of the " Man with the Iron Mask," the 
mysterious prisoner who died in the prison of the island of Hy^res. 
He remained there all his life, and was never identified. 

44 



THE MEDIEVAL COMMONWEALTH 

Bastille, does the European state pretend to protect na- 
tional interests. Such things are impossible in an Anglo- 
American country, where the mediaeval judicial authority 
of the count has been transferred to the people, the state 
having never succeeded in usurping the old feudal privi- 
leges. 

In France, where originally the king had only a very 
small estate, no power, and no army except his personal 
followers, the absolute state did not exist before the six- 
teenth century ; for the French parliaments were still 
powerful in the fourteenth century, as we see by their 
records. The feudal compact knew of no '^ national 
army " ; in case of war the different vassals of the medi- 
aeval king were obliged to furnish their individual quo- 
tas ; the king called on them for support as the presi- 
dent of the United States called on the different states 
of the Union during the war of secession. As the king 
could not tax the people, he could not maintain a '^na- 
tional army'' ; but he was allowed certain subsidies by 
parliament, in order to keep up a small force for his 
own executive duties. Hence the feudal statute still ex- 
isting in England, under which the English navy is desig- 
nated as ^' Her Majesty's Navy," and the feudal tradition 
which, although preventing the establishment of militar- 
ism, leaves to the Queen of England, or to the President 
in the United States, the disposal of a certain number 
of regular troops to protect the country's interests. 
The feudal compact always regulated the amount of the 
military contingent to be furnished to the king. One 
duke furnished 1000 or 500 fighting men, another per- 
haps 300, a count, 100 ; the common knight or freeman 
furnished sometimes only his own person, with horse and 
equipment. There was no national flag ; the army did 
not fight under the king's banner ; the archer, the pike- 

45 



THE MEDIEVAL COMxMONWE ALTH 

man, the man-at-arms fought under the banner of his 
own duke or count, pretty much like the Greeks before 
Troy. But later on, when the French, the Spanish, the 
German kings absorbed all the feudal privileges and 
rights, the feudal compact being broken, there was no re- 
straint, no limit, no legal barrier any more to their mili- 
tary ambition and power. The state imposed compulsory 
service, raised as many soldiers as the quarrelsome or am- 
bitious policy of the government might require, created a 
large army and compelled everybody to pay for it. Then 
war could be undertaken to foster dynastic interests ; and 
what was graver still, the state, keeping itself armed to 
the teeth, used its military force to coerce the people 
into political slavery, using bayonets and grape-shot in 
more modern times to maintain its nsurped authority. 

"It was impossible,"' says Macaulay, "for the Tudors 
to carry oppression beyond a certain point ; for they had 
no armed force and they were surrounded by an armed 
people. Their palace was guarded by a few domestics, 
whom the array of a single shire or of a single ward of 
London could with ease have overpowered. These 
haughty princes were, therefore, under a restraint strong- 
er than any which mere law could impose — under a re- 
straint which did not, indeed, prevent them sometimes 
from treating an individual in an arbitrary, and even in 
a barbarous, manner, but which effectually secured the 
nation against general and long oppression. They might 
be tyrants within the precincts of the court, but it was 
necessary for them to watch with constant anxiety the 
temper of the nation. . . . Thus, from the age of Henry 
III. to the age of Elizabeth, England grew and flour- 
ished under a polity which, contained the germ of our 
present institutions, and which, though not exactly de- 
fined, or very exactly observed, was yet effectively pre- 

46 



THE MEDIEVAL COMMONWEALTH 

vented from degenerating into despotism by the awe in 
which the governors stood of the spirit and strength of 
the governed. . . . The policy which the parliamentary j 
assemblies of Europe ought to have adojoted was to take ' 
their stand firmly on their constitutional right to give or 
withhold money, and resolutely to refuse funds for the : 
support of armies, till ample securities had been pro- 
vided against despotism. This wise policy Avas followed 
in our country alone ; in the neighboring kingdoms 
great military establishments were formed, no new safe- 
guards for public liberty were devised, and the conse- 
quence was that the old parliamentary institutions every- 
where ceased to exist. . . . One after another the great 
national councils of the continental monarchies, councils 
once scarcely less proud and powerful than those which 
sat at Westminster, sank into utter insignificance. If 
they met, they met merely as our convocation now meets, 
to go through some venerable forms."^* 

The safeguards, indeed, had been originally the same 
on the Continent as in England. 

When Louis XIV. ascended the throne, France had 
already converted the old feudal commonwealth into an 
Eastern monarchy. The state was to regulate every- 
thing, and with its superior intelligence and wisdom 
was to determine what was best for the interest of all. 
Whether it should attend only to the public highways 
and the public money, or whether it should decide in its 
superior wisdom what religion a Frenchman must have, 
what colleges and schools shall be supported by the na- 
tion, and of what national patriotism shall consist, de- 
pended now merely on the political weather. And when 
the French owners, reduced to abject misery by the folly 

* History of England, Vol, L, p. 20. 

47 



THE MEDIAEVAL COMMONWEALTH 

and extravagance of their managers, applied to revolu- 
tionary methods/ dismissed their agents and appointed 
new ones, in 1793, French despotism became more in- 
tense yet ; for as the paternal machine did not work to 
general satisfaction as expected, people believed that the 
only cause of trouble lay in its not being strong and 
heavy enough. Consequently the weight of the state 
must be more and more increased to secure the paternal 
results, till the nation was "flattened out," as in Ger- 
many, to the required shape. What becomes of indi- 
vidual energy, intelligence, and manhood, and what a 
spectacle these individuals present when all gathered to- 
gether in one mass — the nation — after the "flattening 
process" of vertical pressure from the state has distorted 
all intellects, can be seen in the following extracts from 
French and German historical records. 



CHAPTER III 

VERSAILLES 

The feudal safeguards protecting individual rights 
thus gradually disappeared, and authority was taken 
away from ^^ home-rulers^^ to be concentrated into the 
hands of one master — ^^the state." 

In France, the "grande" nation exists now. Wlmt 
its condition is going to be we shall soon perceive. 

In the first place, from all innumerable records of 
the time, gathered in France by the ton, contained in 
contemporary memoirs, chronicles, letters, treasury ac- 
counts, and official reports, one glaring fact appears in 
almost dazzling light as a characteristic feature of this 
French state ; the fact that for all practical purposes 
of human existence, our great king, ^*le grand Eoi," as 
his countrymen call him, might as well exchange thrones 
with the Sultan. 

In his splendor, surrounded by his low-bowing court- 
iers and favorite " houris," he might as well represent 
the state in some Asiatic country where political doc- 
trines would be the same as at Versailles ; where peace 
and war, with all their consequences, are decided by one 
mind alone, in the seclusion of the royal harem, at the 
gaming or the dinner table, or perhaps during a stroll 
in the royal park. *'I am the state!" — ^'L'etat c'est 
D 49 



VERSAILLES 

moi /" — a royal motto, which will be repeated by all sub- 
sequent Erench managers. 

Versailles was now the residence of this head of the 
nation, a palace built at colossal expense to the people, 
but never big enough, to Judge from the constant addi- 
tions made to it. Thirty-six thousand masons, carpen- 
ters, and day laborers had been working constantly at it 
for several years.* 

Here also the French nobility is now congregated, the 
proud descendants of our mediseval dukes, counts, and 
barons ; not steel-gloved any more, nor handling battle- 
axes, nor discussing in buckskin jackets and muddy rid- 
ing-boots the rents of meadows with villagers and peasants. 
They are in a very different costume, and in a most ex- 
traordinary attitude for noble lords. With wigs and 
satin breeches, sky-blue or apple-green velvet coats with 
gold trimmings, embroidered silk waistcoats, lace ruffles 
covering their manly breasts, and tiny fancy court 
swords, our noble lords are standing with due reverence 
before the chief of state ; not like the English barons 
at Runnymede ; but revolving in their aristocratic minds 
quite different thoughts. For our king and master, 
having just finished his prayer, glances with dignified 
and proud countenance at our humble crowd, and then 
opening his royal mouth he calls one of us by name, 
everybody hearing the royal command with beating 
heart and panting breath. The King is going to bed 

* An idea of the pomp of "our beloved King and Master" can 
be formed from the fact that a successor, Louis XVI., who never 
passed in history for an extravagant man, kept in the stables at 
Versailles for his own use — the other members of the royal family 
and the great officers having other stables— 1857 horses, 217 coaches, 
with 1458 "attendants of the stables," whose livery coats alone 
cost yearly 500,000 livres (about $500,000 in American money). 

50 



VERSAILLES 

now, and the gentleman he has named shall hold the 
candle in the bedroom. Upon which every one of ns 
retires, bowing very low, with anxious face, fearing that 
one^s star is setting, with secret misgivings not nn- 
mingled with hopes. 

''He had substituted 'ideal' favors," says the Duke 
of Saint Simon — one of our noble lords, but endowed by 
nature with much perspicacity and sense — "for real 
favors, of which he had not enough to bestow on all, 
thus raising jealousies by little preferences, in an artful 
manner. Nobody was more ingenious in inventing con- 
tinually such little preferences and distinctions which 
engendered hopes. The castle of Marly was of much 
use to him in this respect ; and the Trianon also, where 
we all could, it is true, make our court to him, but where 
the ladies had the honor to eat with him, and where they 
were selected at each meal. The candlestick also, which 
he commanded one of the courtiers to hold every even- 
ing at bed-time when his prayer was over, was very use- 
ful to him as a mark of distinction. The 'brevet 
jacket' was another one of these inventions. It was 
blue, lined and trimmed with red, magnificently em- 
broidered with gold and a little silver in it. There were 
only a few of them, used by the king, his family, and 
the princes of royal blood. The most distinguished 
noblemen of the court used to beg the king for them, 
and it was a grace to get one. Until the death of the 
king, as soon as one of the jackets was disengaged there 
was a general scramble among the greatest lords to ob- 
tain it ; and if a young nobleman received it, it was a 
surprising distinction. The different tricks of this kind 
which followed year after year, as the king was getting 
older, would be too numerous to explain.'' 

Let ns observe here also another extraordinary fact. 

51 



VERSAILLES ' 

Our great king is not surronnded by a distinct minority 
of parasites and sycophants, a thing that might be ex- 
pected, and that happened sometimes in England. ]N"o ! 
All French nobility flocks to Versailles ; no nobleman 
can afford to live year in year out on his estate. Such 
conduct would amount to suicide ; his name, his person 
would be forgotten by the head of the state, and his 
prospects and the prospects of his children and relatives 
would be ruined. In the eyes of polished French so- 
ciety, a country squire or nobleman is now "nobody." 
A nobleman attending to his business interests, to his 
lands, his vineyards, his mills, remaining at home in 
contact, as formerly, with the country people, is simply 
considered as disloyal, as a sulker, whom the state might 
do well to watch, since he cares so little for the favors 
bestowed by its head. 

Besides, by staying in Versailles and using tact, by 
keeping one^s self posted every day on all underground 
rumors and gossip, by gaining the ear of Madame, the 
present favorite, through her father, husband, or brother, 
or even through her butler or maid, one's chances of 
success in life are almost assured. Should I succeed in 
making myself agreeable to Madame or Monsieur whom 
the king is distinguishing now by special favors, I could 
obtain the honorary command of a regiment, be made a 
decorative officer, an intendant, or inspector of some- 
thing, with nothing to do and ten, fifteen, or even fifty 
thousand a year ; or the king, hearing of my incompar- 
able devotion and loyalty, might also reward me with a 
pension, or a present in hard cash. 

Speaking of St. Simon's memoirs, Dussieux expresses 
himself as follows: "The political system is clearly 
shown in these pages ; the king wants to remain the 
master of the nobility and to keep it under his thumb ; 

63 



- VERSAILLES 

that is the reason why he gathers them up in Versailles, 
where he ruins them by extravagance and gambling ; he 
then gives them large incomes and court situations, 
pensions, and gifts. In order to understand this ^ex- 
change of independence for slavery,^ as St. Simon calls 
it, it is enough to peruse the immense 'Collection of 
the King^s Bestowals^ written up by Bishop Dangeau, 
and kept in the collection of manuscripts of the National 
Library. There is not a single nolle family in France 
which does not live on the hinges money." 

The state has "bought up" all the leading class of 
France, making it a privileged class of fashionable beg- 
gars, lackeys, and knaves, a class of men born free, with 
all the advantages of rank and education, but now 
stretching their hands like modern Oastilian or Italian 
vagabonds ; standing like a crowd of their own footmen, 
with curved backbones, before this single man who repre- 
sents "■ the state,'' and who walks, cane in hand, in the 
sumptuous and crowded halls of his hundred-and-six- 
teen-million mansion ; ready to sell their soul and honor, 
even their wives, as did the Marquis de Montespan, "for 
a consideration "', men who, in their fatuity, claim to be 
the standard-bearers of good taste and manners for the 
world ; the only "gentlemen " of France ; and whom their 
successors still exhibit to modern generations as everlast- 
ing models of refinement and culture ; whom academical 
France excuses on account of " the admirable influence 
the great king and his court exercised on French in- 
tellects and French ''glory.''' 

But this is not all. Our nobles have fallen into a 
shameful habit since they are all congregated at Ver- 
sailles ; for, having nothing else to do now, and being un- 
able to manifest their usefulness on earth, they have taken 
to gambling for high stakes ; and what is more serious, of 

53 



VERSAILLES 

cheating sometimes at cards in the magnificent halls of 
Versailles. 

"Among all the profound evils inflicted on France by 
the rule of Cardinal Mazarin/^ says the Dnke of St. 
Simon, "gambling for high stakes and cheating were the 
ones to which he soon accustomed everybody, high and 
low. It was one of his best means to ruin the noblemen 
whom he hated and despised; and also the French nation, 
of which he wished to annihilate all those who were great 
either by themselves or by their parchments. This work 
of destruction was continued ever since his death to this 
day, when the work is completed — a success which must 
surely cause soon the collapse and ruin of this kingdom." 

Prophetic Duke of St. Simon, who was writing these 
lines in 1750, thirty-nine years before the French Eevolu- 
tion ! 

" The Duke of Burgundy," writes Madame de Sevigne, 
in one of her letters, " having no more money, asked the 
king to give him some ; he gave him more than he needed, 
and told him not to mind losses, as it made no difference to 
such gentlemen as he, for if they lost they could always 
get more." 

"A few days later," says Dangeau, "the king paid 
12,000 pistoles ($120,0,00) which his daughter the duchess 
had lost at cards, but he told her to stop making debts."* 
In 1702 the duke again lost heavy amounts, which the 
king paid. 

Let us observe that Dangeau kept a diary of all his 
life at court, which invaluable document was afterwards 
printed and published. 

On September 1, 1715, after a reign lasting over half 
a century, Louis "the Great" lay dead at Versailles, on 

* Dangeau. Journal, May 19. 
54 



VERSAILLES 

his sumptuous bed. We have a water-crolor picture of 
this couch in the National Cabinet of Engravings ; and 
during his reign no lady of the court passing through 
the royal bedroom ever walked by without making a 
humble reverence, according to etiquette, to the empty 
bedstead. There lay now the royal corpse ; but before 
taking a last look at this head of the French state, let 
us hear what important and wonderful ceremonies ac- 
companied every morning the rising of a French king. 
These ceremonies lasted till the French mob overturned 
the French state. 

'^In the morning," says Taine, *^at the appointed 
hour, the First Valet of the Bedroom awakens the king. 
Five categories of persons enter in their turn to pay 
their respects, and although the waiting-rooms are very 
vast, they are sometimes insufficient to hold the crowd 
of courtiers. First of all, the ^familiar entry' takes 
place. The 'children of France' — the king's children 
— princes and princesses of the blood ; then the First 
Physician, the First Surgeon, and other useful persons. 
Then comes the 'grand entry'; it is composed of the 
Grand Chamberlain,* the Grand Master, and the Master 
of the Wardrobe, the First Lord of the Bedchamber, the 
Dukes of Orleans and Penthievre, some other very fa- 
vored noblemen, the maids of honor and lady-compan- 
ions {dames d'atour) of the queen; and those of the 
king's and queen's sisters, or of other princesses ; with- 
out counting the several barbers, tailors, and footmen 
of various sorts. In the meanwhile, on a gold plate, 
alcohol is poured over the hands of the king ; then 
holy water is presented to him. He makes the sign of 

* He received from the state about eight hundred thousand livres 
a year (about eight hundred thousand dollars, according to modern 
valuations). 

55 



VERSAILLES 

the cross, and pronounces his prayer. Then before all 
these ladies, noblemen, and others, he gets out of bed 
and puts on his slippers. The Grand Chamberlain and 
the First Lord of the Bedchamber present to him a 
gown. He puts it on and walks to the arm-chair where 
he is going to be dressed. At this moment the doors 
open again. A third wave of people enters. This is 
the 'brevet entry.^ The lords who compose it have also 
the precious privilege of assisting at the ceremonial of 
' the little bedtime ' — le petit coucher ; and at the same 
moment enter a number of servants, ordinary physicians 
and surgeons, intendants of menus plaisirs, or recreation, 
readers and other men, among these the Porte Chaise d' Af- 
faires — bearer of the close-stool. ISTone of the functions 
of the royal person can be accomplished without wit- 
ness, indeed ! At the moment when the officers of the 
wardrobe approach the king to dress him, the Eirst 
Lord of the Bedchamber, being duly advised by an ush- 
er, comes to tell the king the names of the gentlemen 
who wait at the door. This is the 'fourth entry,' the 
so-called 'entry of the chamber,' larger than the pre- 
ceding ones. Without counting the ' Cloak Carrier,' the 
' Blunderbuss Carrier,' room decorators, and other ser- 
vants, this entry comprises most of the great officers, 
the Grand Almoner, the Almoner of the Quarter, the 
leader of the chapel choir, the Master of the Oratoire, 
the captain and major of the body-guards, the colonel 
and the major of the French Guards, the colonel of the 
King's Own Eegiment, the captain of the Hundred 
Swiss, the Master of the Hunt, the Master of the Wolf- 
hunt {Grand Louvetier), the Grand Prevost, the Grand 
Master and the Master of Ceremonies, the First Stew- 
ard, the Master of the Bread, the foreign ambassadors, 
the ministers and state secretaries, the marshals of 

56 



VERSAILLES 

France^, and the most eminent persons of the nobility 
and clergy. The ushers keep the crowd in order, and, 
if need be, impose silence. 

''^The king then washes his hands, and begins to take 
off his night garments. Two pages take off his slippers. 
The Grand Master of the Wardrobe j)ulls off the right 
arm of the night-jacket ; the First Valet of the Ward- 
robe pulls off the left arm. Both hand the night-jacket 
to an officer of the wardrobe, and a valet of the ward- 
robe brings the shirt enclosed in a white satin wrapper. 
This is now the most solemn moment, the culminating 
point of the ceremonial. The ^ fifth entry ^ has been in- 
troduced, and in a few minutes, after the king has tak- 
en the shirt, all the eminent persons and officers who are 
still waiting in the anterooms will come in. There are 
a number of regulations about this shirt. The honor of 
presenting it is reserved to the ^sons and grandsons of 
France^ — (of the king) — but in their absence, to the 
princes of the blood, and to the royal bastards who have 
been legitimated ; in their absence, to the Grand Cham- 
berlain and to the First Lord of the Wardrobe. Let us 
observe that such an absence is seldom the case, because 
the royal princes are obliged to witness the ' rising ' of 
the king, just as the royal princesses are obliged to wit- 
ness the ^rising' of the queen. At last the shirt is 
brought. A valet of the wardrobe carries off the night- 
shirt. The First Valet of the Wardrobe and the First 
Valet of the Bedchamber hold the fresh shirt, one by 
the right arm, the other by the left arm ; and during 
the operation two other valets of the bedchamber stretch 
out the king's gown as a screen. The shirt is on, and 
the final dressing is now going to begin." * 

* Taine. L'Ancien Regime. 

57 



VERSAILLES 

We spare the reader the rest of this ceremony of state, 
which takes place every morning. We observe only that 
the same ceremony must take place in the bedroom of 
the queen, but there the number of '^ entries'' is reduced 
to three ; only the princes of the blood, captains of the 
guards, and other great officers being admitted in the 
*' grand entry'' at the "moment of dressing" {Vheure 
de la toilette). The royal chemise is presented only by 
ladies, but with the same regulations of French etiquette. 

" This," continues Taine, '' is the Lever dto Roi" (royal 
levee), "apiece in five acts. Certainly one cannot imag- 
ine anything more perfect to occupy the time of the no- 
bility. A hundred noblemen of the highest rank have 
employed two hours in coming, waiting, entering, march- 
ing up, taking their positions, standing on their feet, 
and in keeping on their faces the easy and respectful 
expression which becomes such great actors ; and when 
they get through with the king, they begin over again 
at the queen's apartments." 

The amazing ceremonies of "all France," of that 
'' wonderful" society so praised by Madame de Sevigne 
and her literary successors, may bring forth a smile upon 
modern lips ; but there was a philosophy in them, a 
hidden meaning recognizable to-day in the continental 
courts of Europe, a symbolic expression that the state, 
and consequently its representative, was an idol, an al- 
legorical condensation, so to speak, of all wisdom and 
authority on earth. Of what this idol is really made, 
of what chemical substances the allegorical compound 
turns out to be composed, and how different the imagi- 
nary state is from the real, this is what history shows. 

These ulcers of the French body politic have been so 
often described that there is no necessity to remind the 
reader how numerous they were, and how deeply they 

^58 



VERSAILLES 

had eaten into the nation's sinews. Their existence was 
the natural consequence of an unhealthy political diet ; 
and, as we shall see, similar corruption existed at the 
German courts. The Revolution was nothing else than 
a violent protest against abuses of state j)ower ; but while 
it removed these effects of a nefarious political doctrine, 
it did not alter the doctrine that caused them, nor was 
it possible to cure the moral degradation they had pro- 
duced. The evil influence of the state was such that 
the French ideal of culture has been lowered ever since. 
The most striking phenomenon of this French display 
of galanterie and savoir vivre consists less in its mani- 
festation than in the leniency with which French au- 
thors have judged it. Not only had. the paternal state 
caused the ruin of the nation, but it had perverted its 
tastes by false education, by a substitution of false stand- 
ards of excellence. That the ablest of all modern French 
writers, after himself describing the characteristic feat- 
ures of that society, should express himself as follows, 
can only be explained by the traditional peculiarities of 
the French mind. 

He is speaking of how a lady of the old regime could 
express by her demeanor her full appreciation of social 
ranks. '^ A foreigner,'* says Taine, ^^ remains stupefied 
when he sees how she circulates among so many awakened 
vanities, without ever hurting or being hurt. She knows 
how to express everything by her reverences, which vary 
by imperceptible shades from the moving of a single 
shoulder, which is almost an impertinence, to that noble 
and respectful bow which so few women know how to 
make, even at court. . . . Imagine, if possible, the de- 
gree of elegance and perfection to which good breeding 
had brought such people. I take one instance at ran- 
dom, a duel between two princes of the blood, the Count 

59 



VERSAILLES 

of Artois and the Duke of Bourbon. The latter was the 
offended party, and the other was bound to offer him a 
meeting. As soon as his Grace the Count of Artois 
saw the Duke " — (Taine here quotes from Besenval, a wit- 
ness of the duel) — " he sprang to the ground, and going 
straight to him, said, with a smile, ' Sir, the public as- 
serts that we are looking for each other.' The Duke, 
taking off his hat, answered, ^ Sir, I have come here to 
obey your orders.' 'I am here to obey yours,' retorted 
the Count of Artois, 'and I crave permission to return 
a moment to my coach.' He comes back with a sword, 
and the duel begins ; but after awhile the bystanders 
separate them, and the seconds declare that honor is 
satisfied. ' It is not I who should have an opinion on 
the matter,' says the Count d' Artois; 'it is for his Grace 
the Duke of Bourbon to say what he wishes, for I am 
here to receive his orders.' ' Sir,' answers his Grace 
the Duke of Bourbon, lowering his sword, 'I am pene- 
trated with gratitude for your kindness, and I shall never 
forget the honor you have done me.' 

"Is it possible," Taine now remarks, "to have a truer 
and finer feeling for ranks, conditions, and circumstances, 
and can you surround a duel with more graces ?" 

This is, indeed, the typical French duel, with its ludi- 
crous and stagey forms, of which "all France" is so 
fond to this day ; but the grotesqueness of such a per- 
formance escapes French vision. The ablest writer of 
modern France sees in all this not a ridiculous display 
of nonsensical forms, but an exquisite manifestation of 
refinement. His eye is caught only by the pasteboard 
decorations of the French stage — that stage on which the 
greatest tragedies of Europe are soon to be played realis- 
tically. If such a mind as Taine's sees nothing here but 
good breeding and savoir vivre, how can the French 

60 



VERSAILLES 

public have higher ideals of good manners and real dig- 
nity ? One may remain awe-strnck at the vision of a 
Roman amphitheatre, with its bleeding gladiators, its 
dying men and dying tigers, its purple and white robed 
spectators applauding the brave and howling at the cow- 
ards. One may call up in his mind the impressive effect 
of such a stage, with its bloody dramas, and remain si- 
lent ; but Versailles'' social opera - bouffe and French 
Punch-and-Judy performances, with d^Artois and Bour- 
bon as puppets, arouse quite another feeling — the feeling 
of a Shakespearian barbarian at a *^ celestial^' perform- 
ance in a Chinese theatre. 

Among the actors of this Punch-and-Judy or Bourbon- 
d^Artois performance quoted by the eminent French 
writer as an instance of French savoir vivre the read- 
er may notice the name of one of the bystanders, who re- 
lated the duel in his memoirs — the Baron de Besenval. 
Poor Besenval, with his '' fine appreciation of ranks and 
conditions," so characteristic of contemporary French 
culture, is not destined to perform always on such a 
celestial stage. The world in which such men as d'Ar- 
tois, Bourbon, and Besenval are performing graceful 
antics will soon become full of- unheard-of realities and 
inharmonious yells, on which even a Besenval may have 
to gesticulate in another manner than according to Ver- 
sailles etiquette. The Revolution has begun. 

"You go to bed," said Besenval to Louis XVL, "and 
you are not sure that you will not awake up poor next 
morning. That is frightful ! One might as well be in 
Turkey." 

My noble lord, have we not been "in Turkey" for the 
last three hundred years ? Have not your noble ancestors 
decided, many generations ago, that the only possible 
state for France was a Turkish state, with a sultan, with 

61 



VERSAILLES 

pachas and harems ? Have not your forefathers decided 
that 'Hhe state" alone should attend to the public wel- 
fare, and that the only profession becoming a French 
nobleman was the profession of lackey ? 

Poor Besenval ! The Parisian mob does not approach 
him now, hat in hand, '^with the honor to be," like his 
noble friend, the Duke of Bourbon, lowering his sword 
to d'Artois. He, Besenval, now the commander of Paris, 
sees a very different scene while sitting in the Champ de 
Mars, with insurrection raging all around and his men 
melting away. Now would be the time. Baron Besenval, 
Commander-in-Chief of Paris, to act like a man and 
charge like a soldier, sword in hand, to conquer the mob 
or die. The storm is raging, my lord, and Versailles 
stage properties have disappeared. Upon which Baron 
BesenvaFs decision is taken, as behooves such French 
noblemen, with the following result, as described by 
Carlyle : *' Besenval has decamped under cloud of dusk 
amid a great affluence of people, ^who did not harm 
him.^ He marches with faint-growing tread down the 
left bank of the Seine, all night, towards infinite space. 
Resummoned shall Besenval himself be for trial, for 
difficult acquittal. His king^s troops, his 'royal Alle- 
mand,^ are gone hence forever." 

This, then, is the kind of man our French state has 
produced for a crisis, and will continue to produce. 
Were not some of the French leaders in 1870 of this 
kind ? French savoir vivre, meaning, literally, the 
'^ knowledge of living," or the art of social intercourse, 
so characteristic of French nobility, as we are told, has 
ended in obliterating all manhood among the leading 
class. It culminates now in abandoning Paris to the 
mob, in travelling with due haste towards the frontier, 
and later in running away at Valmy, notwithstanding an 

62 



VERSAILLES 

overwlielming force of German allies. When the French 
state-machine breaks down^ as the German machine does 
also two or three years later, neither th^ French nor the 
German leading classes know what the word ^^dnty" 
means. We witness, then, this extraordinary phenome- 
non, that of all these French noblemen not one dies, sword 
in hand, fighting a mob and attempting to re-establish 
order. When they die, they die like sheep under the 
butcher's knife, with the fortitude and stupidity of 
sheep. To die like a lion requires altogether another 
kind of courage, which has been eliminated from them 
by state training and state education. What an end for 
noblemen who have worn for centuries an aristocratic 
sword ! 

The fact is that these men were not men any more ; 
they had no ideal, no convictions, no religion in their 
hearts. Their very vices had not even the excuse of an 
exuberance of passion or of life. With their ridiculous 
wigs and their '' celestial " etiquette, their stilted bucolic 
poetry, sonnets, and epigrams, their fashionable gossip, 
their extravagance combined with greed, their smooth 
tongues and lying hearts, their small brains, and their 
diminutive backbones bent under the weight of state au- 
thority, these men present the most contemptible spec- 
tacle that the world ever saw. They, not their kings, 
ruined France. They were the leaders of the people ; 
they had the power ; the despotism of the state was only 
the consequence of their moral weakness. They crouch- 
ed like hounds before the whip of their master, the king. 
Had they never heard of an English King John brought 
to bay by his barons, of an English parliament, and of an 
English King Charles ? They were knaves and had be- 
haved like knaves for centuries, opposing the world's 
progress almost everywhere the banner of their country 

63 



VERSAILLES 

had been planted, and persecuting the Reformation in 
order to support a corrupt clergy and the Jesuits'* rule. 
They and their state had been a curse to mankind from 
the night of St. Bartholomew, when they and their king 
assassinated the Huguenot leaders, to the day when they 
fled like cowards over the Rhine, to Ooblenz and to Eng- 
land, abandoning their weak-minded king and his giddy 
queen to the mercy of French rowdyism. 

These men deserve no pity. Not a single noble work, 
not a single heroic deed had they done, to be gratefully 
remembered by mankind. The influence of their politi- 
cal degradation, of their corruption and sham nobility, 
is felt to this day in France and will probably be felt for- 
ever, a curse to the nation. For they created the despot- 
ism of the French paternal state on the ruins of the old 
feudal commonwealth ; the same commonwealth which 
was the basis of British freedom. 

How had they and their state fulfilled their duties ? 
Had not the population of France been decimated by 
hunger, misery, and war during more than two centuries ? 
Slowly and gradually, under pretence of improving the 
administration, of removing individual, local, and provin- 
cial monopolies, of abolishing privileges that blocked the 
way of public welfare, the state absorbed the life-blood 
of the nation, till one-third of France's earnings disap- 
peared every year to pay for bureaucratic rule, for state 
extravagance and state folly, to reward favorites and 
functionaries, and during the eighteenth century to de- 
fray the expenses of general corruption. Like a vulture, 
the state now feeds on the prostrate body of France. The 
dove that was believed to lead the way towards green past- 
ures of national happiness turns out to be a gigantic 
buzzard, flapping its wings triumphantly over the dead 
body of the people. Because the feudal privileges of the 

64 



VERSAILLES 

local lords were objectionable to tlie masses, the judiciary 
authority was transferred to the state ; therefore the 
state can now imprison or behead an3^body it chooses, for 
the judges are selected, paid, and rewarded by the state, 
and become in the end mere tools of despotic tyranny. 
Whether the king or the king^s ministers select them, 
or whether they are appointed by a republic which in- 
herits all the powers of absolute monarchy, makes no dif- 
ference in the final result. In both cases, as Ave shall 
now see, when the state substitutes a Phrygian cap for its 
crown, the result is the same : oriental despotism and 
oriental degradation. 

^'^All over France,'' writes La Bruyere in 1689, '^you 
see wild animals, male and female, livid, sunburned, dig- 
ging the soil with invincible obstinacy ; they have a voice 
in their throats and possess a human face ; and, indeed, 
they are men. They retire at night to dens, where they 
eat black bread, water, and roots. They spare other men 
the labor of ploughing, of planting, and of gathering 
crops ; and they should deserve not to lack that very 
bread which they produce." 

" But they lack bread," says Taine, who quotes these 
lines of La Bruyere, ^^ during the twent3^-five following 
years, and they die by flocks. I estimate that in 1715 
about one-third of them, six millions, died of misery and 
starvation. Thus for the first quarter of the eighteenth 
century, before the Revolution, the picture, far from be- 
ing painted too strongly, is too weak ; and we shall now 
see that for more than half a century, up to the death of 
Louis XV., this picture is exact. Perhaps, instead of 
lessening we should increase the figure." * 

Saint-Simon writes in 1725 that "in the midst of profu- 

Taine, Vol. I., p. 430. 
E 65 



VERSAILLES 

sion at Strasbnrg and Ohantilly, the people in Normandy 
live on the herbs of the fields. The First King of Europe 
cannot be a great king if he rales only over beggars, and 
if his kingdom is transformed into a vast hospital for 
starving people, from whom in full peace everything is 
being taken away/^ 

Has Europe not known since then, even to this hour, 
what "full peace ^' means ; and have modern European 
states changed in any perceptible manner the old doc- 
trine which allowed them in the past to impose intolera- 
ble burdens ? A glance at the public debts of European 
states, and at the crushing burdens imposed in order to 
pay the yearly interest on the national mortgage, may 
answer this question. In France alone about fifteen hun- 
dred million francs a year — or, in round numbers, one- 
half of the money exacted yearly from the people — must 
now be applied to the interest on the public debt. 

The population of France in 1698, according to the tax 
records, amounted to 19,094,146. During the regency, 
after the death of Louis XIV., it had shrunk to about 
sixteen millions, and during the following forty years it 
did not increase. The reports of some intendants, made 
even before 1698, stated that in certain provinces one- 
sixth, one-fifth, one-fourth, one-third, and sometimes 
one-half of the people had died.* 

* Correspondance des Controleurs. 



CHAPTER IV 

FKEKCH DEMOCRACY 

!N"ow revolntion has come, with French repuhlican- 
democratic doctrine, with proclamation of a new French 
motto, "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity!" with sonorous, 
empty phrases, declaration of the rights of an ideal man, 
popular insanity, abolition of God and substitution by 
legal statute of the Groddess of Reason, abolition of 
Christ's evangelism, and substitution, by national yote, of 
the gospel of charlatanical Rousseau ! All this has come. 

There was no gospel in France ; there will be one now 
—the gospel of hatred, first to all Royalists, to nobility 
and priests, then to Girondists and all moderate reform- 
ers ; then to all democratic brethren who disagree with 
ns ; also to all men whose personal cleanliness of body and 
clothes is an insult to national ruffianism ; to all those 
who mourn a murdered father, son, or brother ; finally, to 
all nations who refuse to submit to being goyerned by 
French despotism and French barbarity; in fine, to all 
men wherever they may reside who, by their thoughts or 
beliefs, show a criminal independence of mind, or a mute 
disapproval of our new state gospel; with the result 
that for twenty years the European continent becomes a 
vast charnel-house, millions of men dying by bullet, 
bayonet, or sword ; till enraged Europe, catching France 

67 



FRENCH DEMOCKACY 

by tlie throat, puts her claws on the prostrate body and 
imposes peace for awhile. Upon which all Erance, so 
proud of having reformed mankind, abolishes the reform 
and hastens to recall with enthusiasm her beloved king 
and his incomparable nobility. This enthusiasm is marred 
only during one hundred days by an extraordinary per- 
formance of Bonaparte, who, returning suddenly from 
Elba, kicks our beloved king with lightning rapidity 
over the frontier, and pulls our ears for having acted like 
traitors and fools. 

My learned friend, the greatest and most influential 
revolution which mankind ever saw was certainly not 
this one. Of all revolutions known and recorded in his- 
tory, the only one whose work endured, whose work lives 
to this day after two thousand years, was a very different 
one ; for its doctrine, in contradiction to all your revolu- 
tionary principles, consisted not in the conquest of new 
rights, but in the performance of old duties ; a fact that 
nineteenth-century reformers seem all to forget. The 
Christian constitution, '^all duties and no rights,'^ to 
the contrary of yours, which is "all rights and no duties/' 
is, strange to say, the only one which we never attempted 
to improve, the only one in Europe which men have not 
torn into shreds, even though they may have refused to 
live by it. A strange contrast to your constitutions de- 
vised by Sieyes and such other forgotten statesmen, whose 
dismal work we shall have to contemplate in the follow- 
ing pages. 

What will the owners of this French estate do now ? 
Has not France, under the influence of the great Ver- 
sailles teachers of civilization, come long ago to the con- 
clusion that life does not differ much from opera-bouffe, 
or Punch-and-Judy shows, enlivened by French savoir 
vivre and galanterief with Gobelins tapestry for back- 

68 



FRENCH DEMOCRx\CY 

gronnd, with cardinals as leaders of the orchestra, 
Montespans, Pompadours, and such deities as national 
actresses ? But after centuries of such performances, 
since they no longer suit the modern taste of Paris, let 
us have a change of play and of decorative scenery ! 
Opera-boufie, Punch-and-Judy shows, exquisite though 
they were, have become impossible as a steady national 
diet. We shall now have dramas with new, appropriate 
stage properties suitable for new political theatricals and 
such popular evolution of French national ideals as our 
taste may select. 

First of all, let us have a grand national firework to 
convince mankind of our incomparable "Fraternity." 
Let us have a "Feast of the Federation,''^ where all 
Frenchmen, embracing each other, shall put on their 
Phrygian caps — that hideous head -gear — and where we 
will abolish human nature by unanimous vote ; where 
old Versailles stage properties — escutcheons, emblazon- 
ries, books of genealogy, and lawyers^ bags — shall be 
burned, in the hope that French vanity can get along 
without them ; a feast where cannons will boom, soldiers 
defile, and everybody shout " Vive la Liberie /" and " Vive 
la Patrier where all France will eat sugar-plums, and 
thus convince mankind of its devotion to veracity and 
truth. And at the same time let us begin to butcher 
men, women, and children, and construct not far from 
our " eighty- three departmental trees of liberty" the na- 
tional-fraternity machine, a genuine French invention, 
the guillotine, around which our patriotic wives and 
sisters, all besprinkled with human blood, will dance 
the "Carmagnole" and sing the "9^ ira." Let us 
carry human heads on pikes in triumphal processions to 
convince the English and other barbarians that French 
civilization is a model for mankind. Let us have a 

69 



FRENCH DEMOCRACY 

*' Tenth of August," and put a red cap on our Royal 
Muttonhead ; in which boisterous ceremonial, performed 
by the mob, all Paris assists. Among the bystanders 
a certain pale, thin, and black -haired young man of 
Italian extraction, a lieutenant of artillery, looking at 
this scene and perceiving red-capped Muttonhead, pro- 
nounces a shocking word in his native language, mean- 
ing '^ What a coward V This young man's name is 
Napoleon Bonaparte. 

Let us proceed on that day to massacre the Swiss 
Guard, standing silent, without a commander, without 
orders, in stern and mournful attitude, there in the 
Garden of the Tuileries ; not knowing how to act, but 
with one duty clear to them : that of standing by 
their post and not running away like French noblemen 
and French Besenvals ; which duty they alone in Paris 
will certainly perform. Let us point our cannon at 
them with such bad aim "that the grape-shot comes 
mostly rattling over the roofs"; upon which the Swiss 
fire, by volley, by platoon ; in rolling fire, clearing the 
Carrousel, stretching out not a few men, some of the 
fugitives rushing as far as St. Antoine before they stop, 
more than two miles away. 

" Behold, the fire slackens not ; nor does the Swiss 
rolling fire slacken from within. Nay, they clutched 
cannon, as we saw, and now from the other side they 
clutch three pieces more : alas, cannon without lintstock; 
nor will the steel and flint answer, though they try it. 
Had it chanced to answer ! Patriot onlookers have their 
misgivings ; one strangest patriot onlooker thinks that 
the Swiss, had they a commander, would beat. He is a 
man not unqualified to judge, the name of him Napoleon 
Bonaparte. . . . But what is this that with legislative 
insignia ventures through the hubbub and death-hail,. 

70 



FRENCH DEMOCRACY 

from the back entrance of the manege^ Towards the 
Tiiileries and Swiss : written order from his majesty to 
them to cease firing. . . . Patriotic Paris roars : Ven- 
geance, Victory, or Death !^^* 

The Swiss have ceased firing, ordered to do so by onr 
beloved king. Heroic Paris can now proceed to victory, 
and show to the world what Paris heroism — so much 
praised by Victor Hugo, the typical Paris poet — really 
consists of. 

"But," says Carlyle, ^^the most are butchered, even 
mangled. Fifty (some say fourscore) were marched as 
prisoners by National Guards to the Hotel de Ville. The 
ferocious people bursts through on them in the Place de la 
Greve, massacres them to the last man. ^Oypeuple ! envy 
of the universe V Peiiple in mad Gaelic effervescence ! 

"Surely few things in the history of carnage are pain- 
fuller. What ineffaceable red streak flickering so sad 
in the memory is that of this poor column of red Swiss 
dispersing into blackness and death ! Honor to you, 
brave men ! Honorable pity through long times ! Not 
martyrs were ye ; and yet almost more. He was no king 
of yours, this Louis; and he forsook you like a king of 
shreds and patches. You were but sold to him for some 
poor sixpence a day ! Yet would you work for your 
wages, keep your plighted word. The work was now to 
die, and you did it. Honor to you, kinsmen ; and may 
the old Germanic Biederheit and Tapferlceit and Valor, 
which is Worth and Truth, be they Swiss, be they Saxon, 
fail in no age ! No bastards ; true born were these men ; 
sons of the men of Sempach, of Murten, who knelt, but 
not to thee, Burgundy ! f Let the traveller, as he 

* Carlyle. French Revolution. 

f At Murten the Swiss knelt down for prayer before the battle. 



FRENCH DEMOCRACY 

passes through Lucerne, turn aside to look a little at their 
monumental Lion ; not for Thorwaldsen's sake alone !" 

Was not this king with his Phrygian cap the natural 
consequence of other royal cowards who had lived under 
the adjoining roof of the Louvre ? Did not one French 
king, a young Nero of this noble family, stand there at 
midnight, centuries ago — he one of the assassins of the 
St. Bartholomew massacre ? And did he not, by the side 
of his Italian mother, shoot from a still existing window 
on defenceless Huguenots ? Is there not, perhaps, a case 
of divine retribution here on this royal family ? 

And now, on the 2d of September, 1792, what is this 
bell of St.-Germain-rAuxerrois set a-pealing for? The 
very bell — they say it is the identical metal — which 
on that other autumn Sunday had given the signal for 
that frightful butchery hatched up by a French king and 
his church ! Is this church-bell forever destined to such 
calls ? This time the swords, the pikes, and the daggers 
had not been blessed by priests, and the remembrance of 
what they were to do is fresher in the hearts of men, for 
the event took place only about a hundred years ago. 
Patriotic Paris stands at the gates of the prisons — there 
are seven in all — with sabres, axes, and pikes. Volunteer 
bailiffs enter, seize a victim and throw him suddenly into 
that howling sea before an improvised tribunal. A few 
questions are put. Swiftly this sudden jury decides : 
Royalist or not ? " He sinks, hewn asunder. And an- 
other sinks, and another ; and there forms itself a piled 
heap of corpses, and the kennels begin to run red. Fancy 
the yells of these men, their faces of sweat and blood ; 
the crueller shrieks of these women, for there are women, 

Charles the BolcJ mistook their act, ordered the attack, and was 
completely defeated. 



FRENCH DEMOCRACY 

too ; and a fellow-mortal hurled naked into it all ! Jonr- 
gnaic de Saint-Meard has seen battle, has seen an effer- 
vescent ' Regiment du Eoi " in mutiny ; but the bravest 
heart may quail at this. . . . Man after man is cut down ; 
the sabres need sharpening, the killers refresh themselves 
with wine-jugs. Onward and onward goes the butchery; 
the loud yells wearing down into bass growls. A sombre, 
shifting multitude looks on in dull approval or dull dis- 
approval. 

'^ Quick enough goes this jury court, and rigorous. 
The brave are not spared, nor the beautiful. Old M. 
de Montmorin, the minister's brother, was acquitted 
by the Tribunal of the Seventeenth and conducted 
back, elbowed by howling galleries, but is not acquitted 
here. Princesse de Lamballe has lain down in bed. 
'Madam, you are to be removed to the Abbaye.^ 'I do 
not wish to remove; I am well enough here.' * There 
is a need of removing. She will arrange her dress a lit- 
tle, then !' Rude voices answer : ' You have not far to 
go V She, too, is led to the Hell - Gate ; a manifest 
Queen's friend. She shivers back at the sight of the 
bloody sabres, but there is no return. ' Onward !' 
That fair hind-head is cleft with the axe ; the neck is 
severed. That fair body is cut into fragments, with in- 
dignities and obscene horrors of mustachioed ' Grands 
Ldvres ' which human nature would fain find incredible, 
which shall be read in the original language only. She 
was beautiful, she was good, she had known no hap- 
piness. . . . Her head is fixed on a pike, paraded under 
the windows of the Temple, that one still more hated — 
Marie Antoinette — may see. . . . Note old M. de Som- 
breuil, who also had a daughter : ' My father is not an 
aristocrat ; oh, good gentlemen, I will swear it, and testi- 
fy it, and in all ways prove it ; we are not, we hate, aristo- 

73 



FRENCH DEMOCRACY 

crats !' ' Wilt tlion drink aristocrats' blood ?' The man 
lifts blood (if universal rnmor can be credited); the poor 
maiden does drink. 'This Sombreuil is innocent in- 
deed!'''* 

''Six days and five nights of nninterrupted killing/'* 
says Taine ; "among the slain two hundred and fifty 
clergymen, three of them bishops or archbishops." 

Altogether one thousand and eighty-nine human be- 
ings, men and women, among them a negro, a few 
thieves, and a few old paupers. Let us hear some de- 
tails. 

'•' They are gay," says Taine, speaking of the butch- 
ers. " They dance around each new corpse, and they sing 
the 'Carmagnole.' They oblige people who live in the 
neighboring streets to get up in order 'to have some 
fun,' to take part in that 'picnic' (Mortimer Ternaux, 
Vol. III., p. 131. Proces des Septernbriseurs. Resume du 
President, Sicard. 91, 87. Granier de Cassagnac, Vol. 
III., pp. 197-200.) Benches have been brought for 
the 'citizens,' some others 'for the ladies.' The latter, 
more curious than the men, wish to contemplate the 
aristocrats who have already been killed ; consequently 
lanterns are sent for, and one is put on each corpse. In 
the meanwhile the killing improves and its methods are 
perfected. At the Abbaye (Sicard, 91 ; Mathou de la Va- 
reene, 150), one of the butchers complains 'that the aris- 
tocrats die too quickly, and that only the first men have 
the fun to strike them.' Consequently they shall now 
be struck only with the backs of the sabres, and then they 
will have to run between two lines of killers, as formerly 
soldiers between the switches. If the man is well known, 
great care is taken to make the torture last longer. At 

* Carlyle. 
74 



FRENCH DEMOCRACY 

the prison of La Force the 'patriots' who come to take 
M. de Rulhi^res swear with fearful oaths that they will 
cut the head off any man who shall hit him with the 
point. They undress him first ; then, during half an 
hour, they strike him naked with the backs of their 
sabres 'till the intestines protrude from the bloody 
shreds of flesh/ All the hideous monsters that are 
crawling in chains in the lowest depths of the human 
heart come out now at once from their den, not only 
hatred with its fangs, but also the baser instincts with 
their venom, and, like two packs of hounds meeting 
together, they rage now, especially on the women. Here 
ferocity combined with lechery introduces profanation 
in the torture, so that death is provoked by obscenity 
itself. In the case of Princesse de Lamballe, killed too 
quickly, the butchers cannot outrage much more than 
a corpse ; but on the woman Desrues, and especially on 
the flower-girl of the Palais Royal, the butchers surpass 
Nero and the Iroquois. At the Abbaye, a soldier, whose 
name is Damiens, thrusts his sabre into the side of 
Adjutant-General Lalen, then plunges his hand into the 
opening, tears out the heart, and brings it to his mouth 
as if he were going to devour it. 'The blood,' writes 
an eye-witness, ' dripped from his mouth, making a kind 
of mustache.' At La Force, after they had cut Princesse 
de Lamballe in pieces, what the hair -dresser Chariot 
did — he who was carrying her head — I cannot write. I 
can only say that another man in the street of St. An- 
toine was carrying her heart and biting it. . . . They 
kill and they drink. Then they kill again and drink 
again. Weariness comes at last, and also drowsiness. 
One of them, a wheelwright, 'has killed seventeen of 
them for his share'; another one 'has worked so much 
at that Job that the blade of his sabre is gone.' 'Since 

75 



FRENCH DEMOCRACY 

two hours/ says another, ' that I have been cutting flesh 
right and left, I feel more tired than if I had made 
mortar during two days/ Their first passion is worn 
out ; now they kill like machines. Some sleep, stretched 
out on benches ; others sit, drunk, near by. ... * Is 
there any more work V says one of the butchers in a 
deserted prison -yard. 'If there is none,' answer two 
women, opening a door, ' we must find some V (Mehee, 
179.) Of course they can find some."* 

They kill now for the sake of killing. At Bic^tre, in 
the jail, are forty-three children of low birth, sent there 
to be reformed, all from seven to seventeen years of age. 
''Being young, they are hard to kill. Yonder in that 
corner," said one of the jailers, "they made a pile of the 
corpses. The next day, when they had to be buried, it 
was a dreadful sight ! Some of them seemed to be 
asleep, like angels, but others were dreadfully man- 
gled." 

"In every street you hear the tramp of squads march- 
ing off suspicious people before the committee or to jail; 
around every jail there are crowds that have come to 
see ' the disaster '\ at the Abbaye there is an auction of 
the clothes of the dead ; you hear the rolling of wagons 
moving day and night to cart off 1300 corpses, and the 
songs of women beating time on naked bodies, "f 

" In the departments," says Taine, "such days as the 
20th of June, the 10th of August, the 2nd of September, 
must be counted by hundreds. If there are epidemics 
and infectious diseases of the body, there are also those 
of the mind ; and such is the revolutionary disease. 

* Taine. Les Origines de la JF^'ance Gontemporaiiw. 

f Granier de Cassagnac, Vol. II., p. 258. Prudhomme, Les Crimes 
de la devolution, Vol. III., p. 373. Mortimer Ternaux, Vol. III., p. 
631. De Ferri^re, Vol. III., p. 391. Betifde la Bretonne. 

76 



FRENCH DEMOCRACY 

It breaks out in all parts of the country, and every in- 
fected spot contributes to the infection of the others. 
In every city or town, the (Jacobin) club is an inflam- 
matory centre which disorganizes the healthy members, 
and every demoralized centre sends forth its example 
like a miasma. . . . Thanks to this poison, usurpation, 
theft, and assassination shroud themselves in political 
philosophy ; and the worst outrages against property 
and individuals become legitimate ; for they are the acts 
of the legal sovereign (the people) entrusted with the 
public welfare."'' 

Shall we speak of Lyons, of Marseilles, of Avignon, 
of Aries ? Shall we mention in detail the deeds, almost 
incredible to English-speaking men, committed from 
now on in every French province ? Let the reader con- 
sult French historians if he wants to hear more of this. 
Contemporary evidence in the shape of official reports, 
official investigations, statements of eye-witnesses, episto- 
lary correspondence, and such other documents, fills all 
French libraries, not to mention modern French his- 
torical works. For us wdio do not pretend to write 
history, but simply to draw, if possible, some conclusions 
from well - established facts, another duty exists : the 
duty to point out to the reader the true causes of these 
fearful acts. Primarily, the cause lay in the abdication 
by individuals of all their rights into the hands of a 
tutelary state. The facts themselves nobody denies, 
painful as their statement may be to modern French 
ears and to French patriotic cant. We owe really a 
debt of gratitude to French historians, who, with due 
sincerity and due scientific love of veracity, have seldom 
hesitated to tell the truth about these proceedings. But 
if we agree with them on the facts, taking their own 
evidence as a basis for our meditations, we must look 

77 



FRENCH DEMOCRACY 

deeper than they generally do to find the causes of such 
barbarous acts. 

" The mob did it ! Fearful work, we admit, but 
nothing more than mob work due to a fit of temporary 
insanity among the lowest classes of our society P Such 
is the judgment of all past and present France. 

My learned academical French friend, my wonderful 
and superficial French friend, raised and educated on 
Victor Hugo buncombe, let us here part company ! 
Remain on your Olympic heights of French literature, 
but let me — and perhaps some other barbarian fellow- 
creatures — discern something more in all these tragedies. 
To begin with, let us observe the following fact — to 
your eyes rather unimportant — which, although estab- 
lished by your own veracity, has been related by you all 
as a trifling phenomenon, not worthy of comment; a 
simple piece of everyday news, uninteresting to French 
ears, but full of meaning and highly explanatory to us. 
Do not your own chronicles relate that ^' all Paris thea- 
tres, to the number of some twenty-three, were open and 
crowded every night during that week " ? And that, as an 
English writer says, " while right arms here grew weary 
with slaying, right arms there were tweedledeeing on melo- 
dious catgut"? And did not all Paris go to sleep every 
night as if nothing were happening in town ? Were 
not "five hundred thousand human individuals lying 
horizontal there every night as if nothing were amiss"'? 
Where were your "men" during that awful week, when 
pieces of the naked body of poor, beautiful young Lam- 
balle were carried on pikes around town, submitted to 
unspeakable " patriotic " obscenities ; at that time when 
the woman Desrues and that poor Palais-Royal fiower- 
girl were, with blood-curdling shrieks of agony, under- 
going indescribable tortures ? Where were your " young 

78 



FRENCH DEMOCRACY 

men" at the time ? Were they all in the blood-be- 
sprinkled procession, behind Chariot, the hair-dresser ? 
Perhaps they were, but •'^all Paris" — Tout PariSy as the 
fashionable modern Figaro calls it — could not possibly 
all be there, nor be drinking and dancing around naked, 
mangled corpses with a lantern on each corpse and the 
intestines protruding from the pieces of flesh I Was 
there no rope in France to hang assassins ? No gun- 
powder to shoot tigers ? No clubs to brain mad dogs ? 
Was the dazzling light of your ^^Ville Lumiere" (the 
City of Light) really so blinding to your eyes that all 
these horrors seemed only a part of your usual political 
stage performances ? And think of your national bard, 
your Victor Hugo, inventing such a name for Paris at 
the time when eye-witnesses — nay actors — of these scenes 
were still living around him in almost every street in 
Paris ! Where were your citizens, your " men," young 
or old, your *^^ people," your representatives of French 
culture, of galanterie and savoir vivre, of '^delicate ap- 
preciation of social distinctions," and such other in- 
comparable French virtues ? . . . Asleep, in bed, lyifig 
liorizontally, as Carlyle has it ; or in theatres and cafes, 
as behooves "ihQ most intellectual and refined nation 
of the world," talking literature, demi - monde gossip, 
and dress ! Does it not dawn on you at last, my ac- 
ademical friend, that ''all theatres open and crowded in 
Paris, to the number of twenty - three," and pieces of 
human bodies, male or female, carried in procession by 
patriotic '' hair-dressers " at the point of a pike, are two 
totally different phenomena whose simultaneity may 
lead to a very plain conclusion ? What conclusion does 
it lead to, if not to this, that your men were no '' men," 
being either butchers or cowards, human hyenas or over- 
domesticated animals with only well-filled troughs as an 

79 



FRENCH DEMOCRACY 

ideal in life ? Does it not dawn on yon at last that yonr 
Victor Hugo and other distributors of national incense 
and patriotic perfumery, with their admirable phrases 
and wonderful versifying powers, are very poor judges 
of real light, mistaking fireworks for volcanic eruptions, 
and moonshine for sunbeams ? Twenty - six millions 
of much - governed people, admirably trained by their 
father '^the state ^' and their mother "the church," 
represented as being the most interesting type of civil- 
ized humanity, and the most galmit men on earth — these 
twenty-six millions of white men controlled during five 
years by Paris mobs under the leadership of "hair- 
dressers" of the Chariot variety, are a wonderful social 
phenomenon ! Your fictitious ideal Frenchman in no 
way resembles the real twenty -six millions living in 
France at that time ! 

What if your wonderful Bossuet, fluent Massillon, in- 
comparable Fenelon and Bourdaloue, with their admi- 
rable periods and magnificent phrases, had taught the 
French people nothing ? If their classical sermons and 
beautiful church rhetoric had left no more lasting effect 
on French brains than a shower of rain ? What if dig- 
nified Corneille, pompous Racine, and elegant Boileau, 
with their stupendous and eloquent alexandrines, what 
if all your classic bards and versifiers of smooth language 
had had no value whatever as national civilizers ? What 
if the whole French nation, with its great kings and prime- 
minister cardinals, with its craving for a paternal state, 
with its central political goddess of the Phrygian cap, 
and its complete destruction of individual man, had 
taken the wrong road ? 

To all which questions academical France, trained in 
" official culture," shrugs its shoulders with a contempt- 
uous smile. So, too, do modern Toict Paris, and all 

80 



FRENCH DEMOCRACY 

the fashionable world, their smile being interrupted only 
during a few months, when in our own day Paris was 
ablaze, the Prussians in view, and the streets of the 
'^ Ville Lnmiere^'' running blood, while French patriots, 
slaughtering their countrymen, were performing again 
the old French drama. 

Whither has "the state" led us ? What are the prac- 
tical results of our stereotyped education and centralized 
authority, and of Rousseau^'s patent medicine for all so- 
cial ills, to sacrifice individual man on the "altar of 
the people " ? Why, if the state owns all the power, and 
can alone decide whether this or that law agrees with 
the interests, with the will, of " the people," does it not 
stand to reason that "patriots" should first of all get 
control of that power in order to do good work ? If the 
state imposes by law a certain belief on everybody — say 
the Catholic religion, for instance — because it is neces- 
sary for the people's good ; and if I, an atheist, am con- 
vinced that that belief is contrary to sound morality 
and to the nation^s interests, does it not stand to reason 
that I have a clear duty before me — the duty to get 
possession of state authority with my atheistic friends ? 
Then we can hold the rudder in our own hands, and 
turn the ship of state from a course that we consider 
as leading to inevitable wreck. If we have really any 
interest in our country^s Avelfare, the quicker we take 
possession of the rudder the better do we understand 
our citizens^ duties. And are not those who oppose our 
" patriotic " intentions the natural enemies of our coun- 
try, of "the people" at large ? By such logical deduc- 
tions, in a country enjoying the blessings of "paternal 
government," revolution is the unavoidable result. And 
as soon as the new party is in power, the "will of the 
people being supreme," it finds no barriers to the des- 
F 81 



FKENCH DEMOCRACY 

potic antliority of the state ; and, naturally, it uses this 
authority to establish its new doctrine, and to prevent 
its adversaries '^from poisoning the people's minds." 
Hence, unavoidable laws and decrees against the liberty 
of the press, against liberties of all kinds ; laws against 
meetings, against free speech, against anybody who speaks 
unfavorably of the ruler ; hence the Bastille under Louis 
XIV., death by guillotine under the French Republic, 
exile under a Bonaparte, fine and imprisonment in Ger- 
many to-day; and if this offence against ''the state" 
happen during a political crisis, we have courts-martial, 
mob trials, and swift assassination. Can it be otherwise ? 

In such a state, is not the honest and sincere convic- 
tion of a political party a sufficient excuse, even an ab- 
solute reason, for that party to destroy opposition ? If 
you and your friends believe sincerely that the estab- 
lishment of imperial rule, for instance, is the only means 
to save the country, will you not work with all your 
power to overthrow the republic, and vice versa ? Do 
you not know by experience what power the state pos- 
sesses as soon as it is supposed to represent ''the peo- 
ple," whatever the name and title of the ruler or rulers 
may be ? Do you not know beforehand that as soon as 
you have succeeded in getting control of the rudder, 
your own government will be unhindered by individual, 
local, or provincial rights, by a supreme court, or by any 
other barriers ; and that it will be able to impose what 
you consider the salvation — and what may be the ruin — 
of your country ? Hence these kaleidoscopic changes of 
government in France, so wonderful to Anglo-Saxon eyes ! 

The reader knows, indeed, that Lafayette and the 
Girondists, who tried to substitute a constitutional mon- 
archy for the absolute monarchy, were honest and sin- 
cere. But does he not know that Danton, Robespierre, 

82 



FRENCH DEMOCRACY 

and Marat were jnst as sincere and honest ? And in a 
country like France, where the '^ welfare of the people " 
depended on the state, had not every party the right to 
understand by the '^''welfare of the people ^^ the applica- 
tion of its own doctrine and measures ? The Girondists 
had admitted that *' the will of the people was supreme "; 
but what was the ''will of the people ^^? Could even 
elections under state control and pressure answer the 
question ? The Left and the Right could not agree on 
it. Both understood by " public weal " totally different 
things, the attainment of which depended on measures 
diametrically opposed to each other. The result was 
foreordained. Unless one party retired from politics, 
the one had to destroy the other, and the graver the 
situation and the more serious the crisis, the stronger 
was the force employed to get control of ''the state."^ 

When the king disappeared, France's parliament in- 
herited all his powers and became more despotic than 
the king. The name of the ruler was changed, the 
monarchy became a republic, but the ruler's authority 
remained intact. France was never less free than under 
that republic. That republic, with its lying device, 
"Liberty, Equality, Fraternity," was the master of 
every private citizen and the arbiter of his destinies. 
And the more intent the republic was on providing for 
the public weal, for the public safety, the more it per- 
secuted, prosecuted, interfered, arrested, killed, and 
butchered. 

The political short-sightedness of the continental na- 
tions, inherited by traditions and habits, has never al- 
lowed their liberal leaders to see that in an omnipotent 
state like France the French national device, " Liberty, 
Equality, Fraternity," was nothing but a lyric humbug. 
In a modern state like the present French Republic, 

83 



FRENCH DEMOCRACY 

where, for instance, a petty judge can imprison and 
keep in jail anybody he pleases under secret proceed- 
ings, or where the state can make any law it pleases 
without subsequent hinderance in its application by stat- 
utory limits to its despotic power, such a device is as 
much out of place as it would be in modern imperial 
Germany. To deny this fact is to deny the history of 
France for the last hundred years. Has not the state 
there, in virtue of this omnipotence, changed its form 
fourteen times since the first revolution, simply because 
any party who possesses power enough can become "the 
state," and because there is no law in France limiting 
the powers of that state ? 

Thus, in 1793, liberty gains nothing. What events 
will happen afterwards depends merely on the scramble 
for power, the only question now being who will get hold 
of the rudder ? 

You can, indeed, proclaim equality if you wish, in the 
vain hope of establishing divine justice on earth. You 
can take the land from the rich. You can give it to the 
poor. But how will you prevent the rascals, the scoun- 
drels, the vagabonds, and all the worthless men in France 
from plundering the farmer, the shopkeeper ? See ! 
Some men never work ; they only eat, drink, and sleep 
a great deal, while others work and toil, eating, drink- 
ing, and sleeping very little. These men have a little 
sum of money saved by dint of hard work, ingenuity, 
■and economy. Shocking ! Is this equality ? How, then, 
can we abolish nature and enforce equality ? That is the 
question for our lyric French Republic ; and the logical 
answer is that, unless we abolish French thrift, French 
industry, and French instincts of economy, equality will 
never be enforced, for some people will work and save 
their money and others will be only "patriots" — eat, 

84 



FRENCH DEMOCRACY 

drink, sleep, steal, and kill — and no French or any other 
state can abolish this fact. 

According to '^ patriotic " theory, there are evidently 
hidden traitors somewhere interfering with the motto of 
onr omnipotent republic. We are cutting off heads now 
by the thousands, executioners complaining of overwork 
at Lyons, at ]N"antes, Bordeaux, and everywhere ; but 
equality remains a fiction. Like other jDatent medicines 
similarly advertised with brush and paint-pot on great 
buildings, it does not seem to effect any cure. This failure 
becomes more and more evident. In short, we must 
either give up the attempt to abolish human nature, and 
then let inequality alone, or we must compel every man, 
woman, and child in France to stop work and cease sav- 
ing money. This method is tried by plundering all corn- 
stores, establishing government prices for grain, substitut- 
ing wagon-loads of paper money for gold and silver, and 
by all other means in our power ; till finally our lethargic 
peasants, our shopkeepers, our laborers, who do not un- 
derstand Rousseau and his Social Contract, but who know 
how to work and how to save a franc, begin to growl 
and be dissatisfied. Even plunder and the guillotine 
fail to overcome natural laws ; the equality patent medi- 
cine has not cured us at all, producing simply nausea 
and the like among our people, which Bonaparte, when 
at last called in, will know how to stop by prescribing 
grape-shot. 

Moreover, some of our patriots now that they are in 
power seem to retain some business habits, getting rich, 
fabulously rich, like Fouche, by confiscation, or by pur- 
chasing the property of noblemen and the church for a 
song ; equality receding farther and farther into the dim 
background ; rascals becoming wealthy, gentlemen be- 
coming poor ; and in the meanwhile our people eating 

85 



FRENCH DEMOCRACY 

bread mixed with straw^ or the roots of the fields^ in 
beautiful;, starving equality ! 

Are not ''the people's will''' and "the people's weal" 
now the only rules we have for navigating the ship, in- 
dividual man being merely a selfish animal to be domes- 
ticated by the state in its superhuman wisdom ? Did not 
the public weal require the proscription of the Protestants 
and their Bible ? Why should not now the public weal 
require the death of all good Catholics ? Did not the 
public weal require in later years the proscription of all 
the Republicans, after the public weal had required the 
annihilation of all the Royalists and Imperialists ? Where 
is the limit to the interpretation of the public weal ? 
Where was the limit in Europe in 1848, where is it now ? 
If you proscribe my interpretation, can I not make a rev- 
olution as well as you and proscribe you in my turn ? If 
the state can do anything it considers right in 1860, can 
I not as a Paris communard in 1871 court-martial and 
shoot French archbishops and generals for being a curse 
to the nation ? Have I not as much right as you to un- 
derstand and interpret the ''people's will"? 

But, admitting that you succeed in stifling our voice — 
like Louis XIV. massacring the Protestants in the Ce- 
vennes, or the French Republic massacring the "sus- 
pects " — admitting that you finally succeed in establishing 
your system, by carrying the heads of all your opponents 
triumphantly on pikes, what means has the paternal state 
to maintain it ? Is superhuman wisdom, is divine justice, 
is Grod presiding at your parliament ? Are Providence 
and Christ inspiring your politicians ? After all, is not 
your paternal state nothing but a hundred, a thousand, 
ten thousand, or a hundred thousand men, looking like 
all other men, without angels' wings, but with pockets 
in their breeches to put money in, with mouths to feed, 

86 



FRENCH DEMOCRACY 

with passions, sympathies and antipathies, virtues and 
vices, strength and weakness ? How are these men to be 
sure that no great mistake is made ? Have we not al- 
ready had such a paternal rule in the Pope and the Roman 
Church, with able cardinals, archbishops, bishops, and 
priests carefully devising what the public weal requires ? 
With what results ? What difference is there between 
their theory of authority and the theory of your wonder- 
ful paternal state machine ? Are your agents all saints, 
or merely bureaucrats sitting on upholstered mahogany 
at certain hours of the day — with pauses for lunch ? 
Are they wonderful Napoleonic organizers, conscientious 
Fredericks the Great, shrewd King Solomons, intelligent 
Bismarcks, or merely a number of state-drilled, short- 
sighted intellects, generally incapable of administrating 
successfully with their own money a large brick-yard or 
a shoe-factory ? By what channels will your regenerating, 
invigorating elixir of true wisdom — Liberty, Equality, 
Eraternity patent medicine — reach our thirsty lips ? 
From whom will your paternal wisdom drip upon our 
poor state-ridden, much-governed community ? 

Have you ever considered, my Populistic American 
friend, how elastic is the doctrine of the public weal, 
how it can be wonderfully stretched in order to foster 
abuses and despotic authority ; how under its cover, im- 
permeable as it is to light and sunshine, all kinds of fer- 
mentation and decay are unavoidable processes of nature 
which no parliamentary laws can abolish ? Have you 
ever considered how the doctrines of your European 
teachers have invariably ended in disastrous failures ? 
Open the book of history and observe what happens in 
France ! 

The well-meaning, sincere redeemers of the popular 
weal, maintained now by popular suffrage, by pikes, 

87 



FRENCH DEMOCRACY 

bayonets, and a liberal use of beheading machines, are 
sitting in "the people^s" palace, regulating France and 
mankind. These men are not impractical theorists only ; 
on the contrary, they have now become very practical 
indeed, seeing clearly that paternalism without a whip 
must be doomed as a failure, as a nonsensical lyric effusion 
of rhetorical Rousseau. And with more executive ability 
than one expected, these men have gone seriously to work 
organizing swiftly their ubiquitous and powerful bureau- 
cracy. 'No political men ever worked harder; Danton, 
Robespierre and Marat, Roland and Mirabeau, and 
hundreds of assistants have toiled day and night, reading 
reports, examining statistics, appointing able men, dis- 
charging fools, and making contracts for the army that is 
smashing military Prussia and conquering the Rhine 
Provinces, now annexed to France by the treaty of Basel. 
Day and night they are investigating, reforming, correct- 
ing mistakes, and discovering truths. Did ever a secre- 
tary of the interior work harder than Roland, who sits 
with his wife, the new French Minerva, till day dawns 
over the Tuileries, writing orders, signing papers, examin- 
ing documents, deciding practical measures, making mar- 
ginal notes ? Till, by dint of Herculean labor and cease- 
less work, the paternal state has cleaned the Augean 
stables, and in every department, in every city, town, and 
parish, instead of old, unsatisfactory methods, a complete 
service has been established. 

French republican bureaucracy swiftly extends its nets 
over the whole country. Besides the complete civil or- 
ganization which was soon in working order, numerous 
supervisors, inspectors, commissioners, and the like de- 
part daily from the central shrine of wisdom, carrying 
along with their instructions a tricolor scarf and other 
credentials, to peer with lynx-eyed, incorruptible sagacity 



FRENCH DEMOCRACY 

into every act of their subordinates. Do not three of 
these men appear one morning at General Lafayette's 
headquarters, summoning him at once to Paris to answer 
some questions and explain his apparent lack of zeal ? 
Does not Lafayette become clear-sighted at last, and ride 
for life across the adjacent frontier, knowing perfectly 
well that his devoted army (which sends cavalry in pur- 
suit) will respect those three citizens' authority ? Has 
not victorious Dumouriez, after beating back the German 
armies at Valmy and elsewhere, and conquering Belgium 
and the Rhine, been obliged to ride off in a similar way, 
and disappear ? Has not General Custine been similar- 
ly interviewed and obliged to depart for Paris, there to 
be swiftly beheaded by the state *'for having been too 
slow''? If such is the fully recognized, well-established 
authority we possess, that even a victorious general has 
to submit to arrest in the midst of his republican soldiers, 
or run away followed by the bullets of his men, where is 
the civil officer who does not tremble under the inquisi- 
tive looks of the paternal government ? The machine is 
superb, complete, and strong, handled by incorruptible 
men ; for no money on earth will save your neck if you 
are lukewarm, stupid, or lazy ; blood acting like oil in 
this instance to secure prompt and mathematical work- 
ing of the machine. 

But has the paternal government really succeeded in 
imposing its blessed rule on the land ? We know, of 
course, that ^'the people" does not care a French penny 
for the machine, declaring it quite superfluous and un- 
necessary to protect ^^the people's" interests. This the 
people will do for itself, without civil-service machinery, 
courts, tribunals, and such ornamental contrivances, 
simply by cutting off the heads of all "bad citizens," and 
by promenading with these heads on patriotic pikes. 

89 



FRENCH DEMOCRACY 

^'The people'' will not exactly object to our paternal 
inspector or commissioner, will not stone him or lynch 
him; "the people" will hear his patriotic address, 
drink much wine to his health, and accompany him to 
the public square, where a few heads are to fall this day. 
But the paternal commissioner knows perfectly well that 
it is not safe, nor his business duty, to meddle with patri- 
otic clubs. Our state machine may cut heads, straw, or 
hay, but it will not cut iron pikes. Here already is a 
crank in our machinery which refuses to work. When 
the paternal government has to deal with still more 
paternal "patriotism," what can it do? Disobedience 
to the law, when caused by enthusiasm for the public 
weal, cannot be construed as criminal. Else what right 
have we, the government, to sit here in Paris ? Then, 
too, may not these people find that even we are "not 
paternal enough," mere lukewarm patriots or traitors, 
and that our mute disapproval of their interpretation of 
the public weal is a sufficient reason for cutting off our 
heads also ? Here v/ ell-meaning, honest, incorruptible 
paternalism finds itself in a fearful quandary ! Public 
approval of assassination, public endorsement of mob 
rule, is really not possible. To shut our eyes and let 
the mob have its way, that is bad enough ! But to sing 
patriotic halleluias and march in processions, with the 
hearts of women and the heads of old men dripping 
blood on us, and openly to bless the butchers in the 
name of the state, that we cannot always do ! And now 
the harmonious expression of the people, the patriotic 
howl, is heard over all France : " You traitors, weak- 
kneed republicans ! Did you not promise to obey the 
people's will ? Were you not appointed to protect the 
people's interests, to promote public welfare ? And now 
you refuse to do it ! Now you refuse to exterminate the 

90 



FRENCH DEMOCRACY 

enemies of the nation^ to crnsh those venomous snakes 
who cause our misery ! Down with you ! Off with your 
heads ! Disappear, and let patriotic statesmen take 
charge of the state/' Thus disappear the Girondists, 
brought to the guillotine by wagon-loads at a time ; then 
their adversaries, Danton, Marat, Robespierre, Saint- 
Just, Fouquier Tinville himself, the attorney - general 
and chief provider for the guillotine, and thousands of 
others. Nobody knew how far the limit of the *' public 
weal," the limit of paternalism, would be extended ; 
it disappeared in the red horizon like infinite ocean. 
Danton accused the Girondists of being moderate, and 
they were marched off to death. He, in his turn, is 
accused by Robespierre of not going far enough in his 
interpretation of the public weal, and he dies. But now 
Robespierre himself has to stand before the Assembly. 
''Have I not been paternal, patriotic enough ?" "]^o," 
is the answer ; and he, too, has to die with his brother, 
with Saint-Just, and many others, sentenced by Fouquier 
Tinville. And Fouquier Tinville has to die ! Tragic 
and paternal Kilkenny cats ! To what will this lead us ? 
At this rate, every man in France must disappear, patri- 
otism becoming more and more exacting, till the state has 
become a pyramid of skulls, with the tricolor or the red 
flag on top and an inscription at the base — "Liberty, 
Equality, Fraternity V Which does not happen, how- 
ever, because even French human nature revolts at last, 
and all the nation acclaims a war god, despotic Bona- 
parte, and his well -handled artillery. "Long live the 
Emperor I" 

But there is still another invincible obstacle. Our 
admirable patriotic and bureaucratic machine, with its 
indefatigable statesmen, its incorruptible tricolor com- 
missioners, devoted agents and inspectors, hard-working 

91 



FRENCH DEMOCRACY 

clerks and police captains, cannot, as we saw, work on 
patriotic ruffianism. All it conld do was to exercise its 
despotic authority on better classes of men unable to fight 
ns with our own fire. No theoretical speculation about 
this, but hard, practical, bloody facts, the severing of our 
many paternal necks ! And now another unforeseen event 
takes place, for our machine, excellent as we made it, 
suddenly proves to be very weak in one spot. A fissure 
appears in the boiler itself, the result of natural laws, 
growing wider and wider every day — an ominous crack, 
prognosticating explosion and ruin. Some of our shrewd- 
est, most patriotic, and intelligent representatives, with 
their tricolor scarf and other republican insignia, have 
suddenly shown remarkable symptoms. Most of them, 
though selected from patriotic clubs, from the people, 
are making money fast, travelling about with demi-monde 
and harems in great style, in six-horse carriages, abusing 
their power in order to satisfy their greed, their passions, 
and their vices. What is to be done ? 

"Most of these men,^' says Taine, "find that show 
adds to their authority. Drawn in six - horse carriages, 
surrounded with guards, sitting in the company of ad- 
venturers, 'fast' women, and pretorians, they impress 
all imaginations Avith the idea of their power ; and the 
more extravagant they are, the more the people bends 
its neck before them."' 

The Goths and the Vandals never plundered as much 
as the representatives of French liberty. After a few 
years the country lies prostrate at the feet of its govern- 
ment ; one-half of the nation is composed of robbers, 
and the other half is being robbed. The state bank- 
notes — "the people's money" — have become so worth- 
less that ten thousand francs — two thousand dollars — 
will hardly pay a cab-fare. Gold and silver disappear, 

92 



FRENCH DEMOCRACY 

hidden in secret places, in cellars, drawers, and under 
the ground. Starvation is general, and the regulation of 
corn sales and prices by the government is perfectly 
useless. The old question has to be met : " How can 
equality be enforced when some will work and others 
will not ?" In short, France has become a paternal 
hell on earth, quite the reverse of a paternal paradise ! 

As there is now nothing more to plunder within its 
boundaries, the republican state plunders Belgium, 
Italy, Holland, Switzerland, and the German lands on the 
Rhine. According to careful estimates the plunder 
reaches a total of two billion francs in the three years 
from 1795 to 1798, stolen by the French state from the 
inhabitants of foreign lands. Of this amount three 
hundred and five millions are represented by uncoined 
gold and silver ware of all kinds and by jewelry, and six 
hundred and fifty-five millions by cash payments exacted 
by the French government from public or private vic- 
tims. The pawnshops alone of Rome, Venice, Bologna, 
Milan, Modena, and Ravenna yielded fifty-six millions in 
diamonds, gold and silver ware.* All this to foster the 
'^public weal" in France, and also for the good of the 
victims themselves, who learn by these methods the 
value of French lyrical effusions. Did not these victims 
live in ignorance of our national device, ^' Liberty, 
Equality, Fraternity," of the ^^ rights of man," and such 
other humbugs ? Now we have enlightened them ; we 
have taught them social ideals ! 

In all France not a man rises sword in hand, swearing 
to God that he will stop these butcheries or die in the 
attempt, like a man ; not one — except some peasants in 
the Vendee, who, under the leadership of a few stupid 

* Taine. French Revolution. 
93 



FRENCH DEMOCRACY 

noblemen, wa,nt to re-establish a king on the old Ver- 
sailles pattern ! Not a single Frenchman rises calling 
on his countrymen to stand by him and subdue mob 
rule ! !N"ot one ! Even Lafayette decamped, galloping 
away from his own army, unable to command obedience 
from his soldiers in such an emergency ; his head full 
of impracticabilities, sentimentalities, and other empty 
notions. 

" It could not be done !" exclaim my learned aca- 
demical friends; "army too much infected with Jaco- 
binic doctrines, not confident enough in its leaders ! 
French nation too much blinded by demagogues." 

Indeed ! And was it not done, my friends ! Did not 
one young man do it ? An Italian — not a Frenchman — 
I admit, for his blood was not French, nor his name, 
nor even his language ! But did not one man do it ? 
When asked if he would undertake this '' job," did he 
not reflect a few hours, examine the situation, and say 
"Yes"? With the help of some artillery judiciously 
placed, and a very few men who had discovered that 
this leader at least was not a mere parrot, did he not, 
I say, take your "people" by the throat, knock some 
of them into atoms with lightning rapidity, and send 
the rest howling with fear to their dens, thus finishing 
your French Revolution ? And when this foreign con- 
dottiere, as your best historian calls him, had applied 
his whip to patriotic backs and at one stroke, with very 
little loss of life, had cowed your Paris mob, was not 
the end immediately reached ? Sixty thousand heads or 
more rolling into sawdust-filled baskets and not a dozen 
men rising in France to hang a single assassin — is that 
your ideal of paternal civilization ? 

Let us take a last look at what takes place in Vic- 
tor Hugo's "Ville Lumiere" (City of Light) — or "Gay 

94 



FRENCH DEMOCRACY 

Paris/^ as modern fashion has it — before the curtain 
falls. 

In the early stages of this revolution, when citizens 
are embracing each other on the Champ de Mars, when 
everybody, the king included, takes the oath of alle- 
giance to the new French device, does the nation rec- 
ognize at last that '*^our great paternal kings" are 
nothing but a sad result of our national corruption ? 
Not at all ! The mob acclaims the king and declares 
that he is "the father of the people"; for how could 
the French people live without a paternal ruler ? Roy- 
alty is immensely popular ; parliament being now full 
of *^ lyric effusions," and becoming daily more wonder- 
fully grotesque with its political opera-bouffe perform- 
ances, of which Rousseau^s pupils are the impresarios. 
For instance, Anacharsis Clootz, entering the august 
hall where our parliament sits, with the human race — 
{U genre liumai7i) — at his heels: "Swedes, Spaniards, 
Polacks, Turks, Chaldeans, Greeks, Dwellers in Meso- 
potamia, behold them all ! They have come to claim 
place in the grand federation, having an undoubted 
interest in it." 

"'Our ambassador titles,^ says the fervid Clootz, 'are 
not written on parchment, but on the living hearts of 
all men. These whiskered Polacks, long -flowing tur- 
baned Ishmaelites, astrological Chaldeans, who stand so 
mute here, let them plead with you, august senators, 
more eloquently than eloquence could. They are the 
mute representatives of their tongue - tied, bef ettered, 
heavy-laden nations, who from out of that dark bewil- 
derment gaze wistful, amazed, towards you and this your 
bright light of a French federation ; bright particular 
day-star, the herald of the universal day.^ . . . From 
bench and gallery comes ' repeated applause ' ; for what 

95 



FRENCH DEMOCRACY 

august senator but is flattered even by the very shadow 
of human species depending upon him ? From Presi- 
dent Sieyes, who presides this remarkable fortnight, in 
spite of his small voice, there comes eloquent though 
shrill reply. Anacharsis and the foreigners^ committee 
shall have place at the federation, on the condition of 
telling their respective peoples what they see there. In 
the mean time we invite them ' to the honor of the sit- 
ting' {Jionneur de la seance). A long, flowing Turk, for 
rejoinder, bows with Eastern solemnity and utters inar- 
ticulate sounds, but, owing to his imperfect knowledge 
of the French dialect, his words are like spilt water. 
The thought he had in him remains conjectural to this 
day.''* 

Now the blessing of Heaven has been secured on our 
new tricolor flag by a simple and ingenious process : 
God's blessing ^'descending gently on us through two 
hundred shaven-crowned individuals in snow-white albs 
with tricolor girdles, arranged on the steps of father- 
land's altar, and at their head for spokesman souls' over- 
seer Talleyrand-Perigord. These shall act as miraculous 
thunder rods. ye deep, azure heavens, and thou green, 
all - nursing earth ! ... Is there not a miracle : that 
some French mortal should — we say not have believed — 
but pretended to imagine he believed that Talleyrand 
and two hundred pieces of calico could do it ?"f 

The tricolor flag flutters now on all public buildings, 
though considered by some as not being red enough. 
Let us have another one now — the red flag, whoever 
may bless it, oflicial overseer of souls Talleyrand-Peri- 
gord or Satan — and let us proclaim that it shall be the 
only true flag of the City of Light, the flag of the Paris 

* Carlyle. French Bevolution. f Idem. 

96 



FRENCH DEMOCRACY 

Commnne ! This flag appeared in tempestuous meetings 
before the City Hall, where Lafayette, as president, suc- 
ceeds in having it removed for a time. 

Honest and able workers, Roland, Carnot, and others, 
who toil day and night, are becoming the enemies of the 
people. Danton himself, with his thundering voice, al- 
though wading in blood, is losing his popularity. But 
one human being among these twenty-six millions of 
French people has risen at last — not a Frenchman, but 
a French girl, who departs silently from Caen, in Nor- 
mandy, leaving to her father a few lines of indifferent 
excuse. She gets admission the next day at Marat's 
house. Rue de T^cole de Medecine, 44, and plunges 
her knife in his heart. A stern, handsome girl, this 
Charlotte Corday, of quiet, well-bred demeanor, with 
no French lyrism in her soul, but old Norman, Shake- 
spearian fire, who dies for what she considers a duty. 
Marat was sick and worn out. He left for all fortune 
the equivalent of twenty-five cents in American money 
and a few squalid pieces of furniture. Some of these 
paternal statesmen, it seems, are in earnest, and work 
only for the public weal, not for themselves. Thus died 
Marat while writing for Charlotte Corday the names of 
fifteen citizens of Caen who should be beheaded. 

The dismal tumbrils continue to deliver their '' loads " 
day after day. Fouquier Tinville has augmented the 
number of the machines, to work faster. All these 
people die like sheep, with the resignation of sheep, 
cowards in action but brave on the scaffold ; too timor- 
ous to fight, but steady enough before inevitable death. 
Could not this kind of courage be transformed into 
manhood ? No. These men are not heroes, only state- 
ridden, domesticated animals, with no wild rage in their 
hearts for injustice and crime. Camille Desmoulins 
G 97 



FRENCH DEMOCRACY 

dies ; then his widow, with eighteen others, among 
whom is Herbert's widow, too ; and all the Herbertists 
who plundered churches and adored Reason ; then Danton 
and all the Dantonists. History calls this period " The 
Terror/' Eouquier Tinville chooses from the twelve 
prisons what he calls "batches'' — fournees — a score 
or more at a time ; finally threescore and more at a 
batch. Thouret, the former president of the Constitu- 
ent Assembly, who made the closing speech, saying that 
it "had fulfilled its mission"; old Malesherbes, who de- 
fended Louis XVI., his relatives, his daughters ; d'Es- 
premeuil, the sister of King Louis — even Simon, the 
shoemaker, to whom "the people" had confided the 
education of the king's son, the child-martyr, they all 
die ; also Lavoisier, the celebrated chemist, who begged 
a fortnight more of life to finish some scientific experi- 
ments, and was told for answer that "the republic did 
not need such." And under such circumstances Paris 
is having in all its main streets "a fraternal supper," 
each citizen bringing forth to the open air, on a common 
table, whatever eatables he can find without infringing 
upon the law, for we have now a law of "maximum" 
regulating appetites. 

And now the City of Light witnesses another scene. 
Robespierre, incarnate figure of our paternal state, pre- 
sides over the convention, which passes a law establish- 
ing "the existence of the Supreme Being," and likewise 
the "immortality of the soul." All Reason-worshippers 
have been beheaded. Robespierre, in sky-blue coat, is- 
sues proudly from the convention hall with a bouquet of 
flowers and wheat-ears in his hand, the convention fol- 
lowing him. With his own hands he applies a torch to 
hideous statues of Atheism and Anarchy, made of paste- 
board steeped in turpentine, which burn rapidly, ac- 

98 



FRENCH DEMOCRACY 

cording to well-known natural laws ; and there rises in 
their stead, moved by paternal machinery, a statue of 
Wisdom, ^^ which by ill-hap gets besmoked a little, but 
stands there visible to all." Then there is a feast. 

The feast being ended, on the 17th of June there is a 
'^ batch" of fifty-four despatched at once. Fashionable 
Paris has now found a new fad. Blond wigs made from 
the hair of female victims beheaded by the paternal 
state have become all the rage. The skin of their 
bodies also is tanned at Meudon with due French skill, 
and transformed into fashionable material for men^s 
breeches. 

And now incorruptible Robespierre, who, according to 
Billaud, "has become a bore with his Supreme Being," 
he too is an enemy of " the people." Mutiny has broken 
loose among the faithful. He rises to speak in the 
convention, but knows that he is lost. " The blood of 
Danton chokes you," cries a voice. The decree of accusa- 
tion is passed against his brother, too, who wishes to share 
his fate ; and against Saint-Just, Couthon, Lebas, and 
Commander Henriot, the war-god of Paris. Henriot has 
heard the news in town, gallops to the Tuileries with an 
escort, and trots off with his friends to the City Hall. Paris 
is in uproar ; the insurrection is raging. The convention 
appoints Barras as commander, and the two armed forces 
meet in the Place de la G-reve. Everybody shouts, but 
nobody fights, for Henriot^s men desert him. He, stand- 
ing drunk at the window of the City Hall, announces to 
his friends that " all is lost," and he flings himself out, 
or is flung out by his own friends, who reproach him for 
their fate. Robespierre tries to shoot himself and fails, 
the pistol-shot only breaking his under-jaw. Bleeding, 
Henriot is picked up : all are brought to an anteroom of 
the convention hall. '^'Robespierre . . . lies stretched 

99 



FRENCH DEMOCRACY 

on a table, a deal-box his pillow; the sheath of the pistol 
is still clinched convulsively in his hand. Men bully 
him, insult him. His eyes still indicate intelligence ; 
he speaks no word. He had on the sky - blue coat he 
had got made for the feast of the Supreme Being. His 
trousers were nankeen, the stockings had fallen over 
the ankles.'^ 

The next day is the 28th of July, or 10th Thermidor. 
At four in the afternoon the tumbrils roll again. There 
lies Robespierre with his half -dead brother and half- 
dead Henriot. Their seventeen hours of agony are 
about to end. A woman jumps on the tumbril to curse 
him ; all the streets, the windows, the roofs are black 
with people. '^ At the foot of the scaif old they stretched 
Robespierre on the ground till his turn came. Lifted 
aloft, his eyes again opened, caught the bloody axe. 
Samson wrenched the coat off him ; wrenched the bloody 
linen from his jaw ; the jaw fell powerless ; there burst 
from him a cry, hideous to hear and see. . . . Samson^s 
work done, there burst forth shout and shout of ap- 
plause. . . . Stricter man, according to his formula, 
to his credo, and his cant of probities, benevolences, 
pleasures of virtue, and such like, lived not in that 
age." * 

''^The republic has now beheaded in Paris, before him, 
fourteen hundred people in forty-seven days.^f 

Carrier dies at last, he the greatest monster of all. 
Fouquier Tinville, the attorney-general, has to plead at 
his own bar, and with sixteen others he is brought to the 
scaffold, insulted by the people. F^or bread is becom- 
ing scarcer than ever ; an insurrection is brewing. 

On the 20th of May the drums beat and the struggle 

* Carlyle. f Bachelet and Dezobry. Bobespierre. 

100 



FRENCH DEMOCRACY 

begins. '^ Bread !" and the " Constitution V are now the 
general cries. One man rises in the Assembly and pro- 
poses a new decree : ^^I ask the arrest of all the knaves 
and cowards !" The president sits, with hat on, unyield- 
ing, although a bleeding head is held before his eyes. 
On the 4th of October insurrection rages again. Barras, 
the chief commander, is undecided ; under him is the 
j^oung officer of artillery, Bonaparte, to whom an op- 
portunity will be given, if he chooses, to show what 
he can do ; and who, after some hesitation, accepts the 
mission to stop the mob, with Murat as his adjutant. 

Now the revolution is over. 

The artillery at the camp of Sablons is swiftly secured 
before the patriots arrive to take it ; there were not 
twenty men there to defend it. All around the Tuil- 
eries, with stern discipline, cannon are judiciously post- 
ed ; for the Lepelletier sections are coming to storm the 
Louvre and the Tuileries ; and at four in the afternoon 
they do come like a human avalanche by all streets and 
passages, in military attire, with bayonet and sabre. 
Whereupon the young artillery officer utters one word : 
'^ Fire V and all his guns begin thundering and roaring, 
killing two hundred men near the church of Sfc. Roch. 
The thunder and roar continue with clock -like reg- 
ularity. No "lyrism^' nor "fraternity" in this; only 
grape-shot, which our patriots do not stand ; a wonder- 
ful eloquence pours from these guns, which convinces 
the patriots very soon, and they take to their heels. 

" It is false," says Napoleon, in his Memoirs, " that we 
fired first with blank charge. It had been a waste of life 
to do that." 

The curtain has fallen at last. *^^ The noblest page in 
any nation^s history," as academical and literary France 
still calls this amazing record, is ended. The Corsican 

101 



FRENCH DEMOCRACY 

has picked up his horsewhip, and he will now apply it 
in such a way to the pack that not a man in France will 
stir a finger without his permission. The tiger has 
grappled the hyena by the throat, and at one stroke has 
broken her neck. 



CHAPTER V 

BOKAPARTISM 

Evidently somebody in France must keep down and 
control too " patriotic ^' effusions, and subdue the French 
mob. Our chivalrous noblemen take to their heels at 
the sight of '* patriotic" sabres. Jacobin pikes, Phrygian 
caps, and such other frightful paraphernalia of French 
"fraternity." This is a fact duly ascertained by experi- 
ence, first at Versailles when the mob played havoc with 
all our paternal state theatrical machinery, cutting off 
the heads of body-guards, breaking into the royal 
palace, and only appeased at length by mellifluent and 
amiable Lafayette; then we recorded the fact at the 
Champ de Mars, when our great commander, M. de Be- 
senval ^' decamped," and ran away without firing a shot, 
laughed at by his men and the crowd ; then at the Tuil- 
eries, when the Swiss, without a commander, being one 
against two or three hundred ruffians, grappled "patriot- 
ism " by the throat in a lif e-and-death struggle, in sight 
of French nobility, and had to cease firing by order of 
our noble king, to be massacred by the mob without a 
protest from a single French nobleman ; then in the prov- 
inces, where no nobleman was ever seen striking at a 
mob ; then at Valmy, where, with 150,000 German sol- 
diers at their back, under the command of a Prussian 

103 



BONAPARTISM 

general of Frederick the Great's school, French nobility 
decamped again, running away so fast with their German 
allies that Goethe, who happened to be in that retreat, 
conld not keep up with their teams. All these things 
have to be admitted, and their sad reality recognized, un- 
happily for poor France. With the help of academical 
and literary France, of Victor Hugo^'s grandiloquent 
lyric effusions and rubbish, and of modern chauvinism, a 
cloak may be put on our French noblemen's historic per- 
formances ; and this may answer all purposes well enough 
in social gatherings ; but the hard fact remains that for 
practical political purposes there is no Leonidas, no 
Horatius Codes among our French noblemen ; no Greek 
or Roman heroism, not even Red Indian dogged pluck. 
They show no bravery whatever at the sight of a mob 
brandishing ^^fraternally" sharp sabres and pikes; only 
an immoderate desire to run away at a rapid gait towards 
foreign lands ; too great a knowledge of the art of living 
— I'art de savoir vivre — and no desire to die. Con- 
sequently on them the nation shall not depend for prac- 
tical help; but keep them merely for show and decora- 
tion, as specimens of French nobility grown up under 
the wings of a paternal state, with headquarters in Vic- 
tor Hugo's City of Light, in the Faubourg St. Germain, 
where they can chat and drink tea during all the nine- 
teenth century, and bow in their bedrooms to tiny Holy 
Virgins or other articles blessed by the Pope. From those 
aristocratic quarters they shall certainly never be required 
to emerge in any useful capacity whatever. 

And now what could be done with our French bour- 
geois, our respectable middle -class man and fellow-cit- 
izen ? Here, too, the prospect is dismal. Our French 
bourgeois, in the first place, estimable as he is in his 
office or shop, honest trader as he may be, excellent 

104. 



BONAPARTISM 

man, as you say, to make clotli and silk, buttons and 
gloves, knick-knacks of all kinds, is necessarily the pro- 
duct of civilization. His number was small in the me- 
diaBval epoch ; he hardly existed then except in a few- 
important towns. Trade and industry, art, literature, 
and professional pursuits were rather unknown in those 
times when, except in Paris, Bordeaux, Rouen, Rheims, 
Lyons, Marseilles, and Orleans, all the people could be 
divided into two classes — farmers and warriors. Since 
that time the world has changed much, and our bour- 
geois, by hard work and innate sense of thrift, has become 
a most valuable member of the French community. We 
can depend upon him at all times for paying our bills, 
be they foolish or not, for he hates bankrupts, insolvent 
people, and is born honest. We can depend upon him, 
too, for scientific or professional achievements, where in- 
born care of details, technical knowledge, and natural 
cleverness will show at all times his true capabilities. 
We can depend upon him for taking good care of our 
streets, for municipal comfort, and other such perform- 
ances of duty, in which our *^^free Americans ^^ are often 
sadly behind him. These and similar virtues the French 
bourgeois has contributed generously to the national 
fund. But for our purpose, unhappily, we cannot de- 
pend upon him either ; because for generations he has 
been " governed, ^^ his attempt at maintaining provin- 
cial parliaments having miserably failed. Have not our 
kings, while patting him on the back with one royal 
hand and expressing sympathy for his industry and toil, 
tightly fettered him with the other royal hand ; strictly 
prohibiting all manifestations of interest in state affairs, 
exacting from him due reverence to the state church, 
and immediate withdrawal from religious meetings nob 
presided over by church overseers ? Have not our kings 

105 



BONAPARTISM 

and masters taught onr bourgeois thut his first duty as 
a citizen is obedience to the government existing in 
Paris, whatever that government may be — Louis XIV. 
or Robespierre, royalty or '^the people"'? Have not 
all our noble lords summarily declined at all times to 
have an understanding with him about the royal power, 
declaring that his habits of thrift and perseverance in 
trade were distasteful to them, mere "beastly," vulgar 
characteristics of lower education, bad manners and 
breeding ? So that, unable to get the ear of such ele- 
gant noblemen, our worthy bourgeois concluded after 
mature reflection lasting several centuries that a pater- 
nal state, and not a fraternal nobility, could alone pro- 
tect his shop. 

Is not this almighty goddess, the idol of state who 
resides over there in Paris, the only friend he has ? 
I^oble dukes and counts do not recognize his right to be 
somebody ; not even when, after the country has become 
starved and bankrupt in consequence of misrule, royalty 
has been pleased to summon him to Versailles, to a 
National Assembly, to look at the bills and devise means 
to pay them. Has not our bourgeois gone there — in the 
form of Tiers Mat, or Third Estate — with all due rever- 
ence, bowing submissively to royalty and taking off his 
hat before our titled fools and clergymen ? And then 
been told by the Pirst Estate (the Clergy) and the 
Second Estate (the Nobility) that he, our bourgeois, 
has no right to be consulted at all, only the right to pay 
the bills ? With the result that after vain protests and 
reverences, summoning up some courage at last, he 
stamped his foot on the ground at the jeu de paume, 
with Mirabeau and others as bell-tiers to the cat ; fired 
out, first fireworks, and then, from sheer inexperience 
of national fireworks, immediately collapsed before the 

106 



BONAPARTISM 

patriotic blaze ? Our bourgeois, I say, estimable as he 
is, having never had the right to wear the aristocratic 
sword or hunt the aristocratic deer, is the poorest shot 
on earth, greatly afraid of a horse, terrified at athletic 
sports, where he might sprain his useful ankle, or where 
his dear boy might break an arm; with '^no fight in 
him ^^ and no taste for ''American bear-gardens/^ His 
well-fed bosom is replete with good nature and hon- 
Tiomie, friendliness to mankind, and kindred lyric senti- 
ments, but he has an ineradicable, inherited conviction 
that ''the state, "*' in the shape of mayors and cocked- 
hatted gendannes, has alone the right and duty to stop 
a thief, a fire, or a mad bull ; and that his civic duty, 
in case of a row, is to put up the shutters of his shop, 
go home, lock the door, and stay there, till " officially '^ 
advised by the police that everything is now in order, 
imperial, royal, or republican rule having been demol- 
ished in France during the afternoon. Upon which 
our bourgeois, fully reassured about the existence of the 
state and the ubiquity of the police, opens his shop and 
goes to work again. That he may, after all, have a 
word to say in such matters, and an interest in them, is 
to his eye a clear absurdity. 

"We tried it when we started the first revolution," 
says he, " and our leaders, the Girondists, the most 
eloquent men on earth, were shamefully beheaded, thus 
demonstrating clearly that we were no success as gov- 
ernors of France. Can we single-handed fight the mob, 
the canaille? Have we time to attend political meet- 
ings, leave the office and the children at home, read 
books on political economy, study French history, not 
to speak of foreign geography, get our noses broken 
by ruffians, and at the same time attend to trade, sell 
silks, velvets, or groceries, or make money as lawyers, 

107 



BONAPARTISM 

notaries, and doctors ? Is not government, my foreign 
friend, one of those things ^that no fellow can find 
out,' an intricate mass of officers and bureaus where 
only statesmen by profession and long education, learned 
mandarins, should sit in upholstered arm-chairs ? What 
are the police for ? Are we not paying taxes to support 
government and not be bothered with it ?" 

With such incarnate, indestructible convictions our 
French bourgeois — Vepicier (the grocer) as his country- 
men call him derisively — buttons up his pocket that 
always has some money in it, leaves whomsoever fate 
may choose to regulate state affairs, and is ready at all 
times to shout '' Vive Somebody !" provided this some- 
body keeps the mob from his shop, and that the cocked- 
hatted gendarme, in his eyes the embodiment of good 
government, be in charge of the town. The same man 
who shouted ^'Vive le Boil" in 1790 shouted ^'Vive la 
Repuhliqiie !" in 1793, " Vive Bonaparte !" in 1798, ^' Vive 
V EmpereuT r in 1802, ^' Vive le RoiT again in 1815 ; then 
^^ Vive V Empereiir !" again during three months ; then 
''Vive le RoiT then ''Vive la Revolution T in 1830; with 
so many similar outbursts of varied enthusiasm after- 
wards that we stop enumerating them. 

Such is our French bourgeois, and such has he been at 
all times ; a thoroughly domesticated animal, so perfectly 
trained by a paternal state that all he asks is to be left in 
peace to enjoy life, with liberty for himself to make some 
money and have some fun, liberty for his wife to go to 
mass ; and for a change, occasional outbursts of national 
enthusiasm, when the soldiers march in parade on Sun- 
day with tricolor flag and " Marseillaise " anthem, or de- 
file before ^^constituted authority" {Jautorite constitiiee) 
and some foreign potentate at its side. There and then 
only, when French flags flutter in the breeze and when 

108 



BONAPAKTISM 

bayonets glisten in the snn, when the helmets of French 
dragoons and their sabres glisten, too, does our bourgeois 
understand the ^^ greatness of France ''; there and then 
will his well-fed bosom heave with patriotic enthusiasm ; 
there and then may a patriotic tear appear beneath his 
peaceful eyelid at the thought that he, who never was a 
'^hero,^^ belongs nevertheless to a nation of ^^ heroes/' 
Tell him through his newspaper that France is universally 
recognized as the greatest nation on earth; that ^'^perfid- 
ious " England, inhabited by selfish and brutal men of an 
inferior race, is dying of jealousy at the growing power 
of French influence ; that the French flag is floating now, 
after heroic exertions of the French state, on some exotic, 
to him unknown, spot, like Taiti or Madagascar, which 
lies in his imagination much farther than the Pyrenees, 
towards the mysterious regions of America or similar 
'^ islands'"; tell him that the Eussian Czar, be he Alex- 
ander or JSTicholas, is delighted with Paris, and has pro- 
nounced its population the handsomest on earth, and 
your French bourgeois will be the happiest " citizen " in 
the world. The state does it all for him. . . . Long live 
whoever is now ^^the state !" 

Upon him, consequently, we cannot depend at all to 
govern the country ; only to pay taxes and war indemni- 
ties — seven hundred millions of francs in 1815, five bill- 
ions in 1870 — and the growing interest of the largest 
public debt on earth, which amounts now to over thirty 
billion francs. Excellent man in such emergencies, our 
bourgeois; for all the money he has — every penny his 
wife saves on the children's butter, on her husband's 
shirt, and all that he can save by wearing his old coat 
and toiling at the counter — is intrusted to the state by 
purchasing bonds. Originally his spirit of financial 
enterprise stopped there ; the purchase of American or 

109 



BONAPARTISM 

foreign securities was considered an unsafe, unreasonable 
venture ; and it requires even now much Hebraic skill to 
induce him to invest his surplus, his overflowing money, 
in Russian or South American schemes, as a little gam- 
bling operation of no great importance. By long absten- 
tion from public affairs, the man has concentrated all 
his mind on his trade or his profession ; happy in his way, 
provided you leave him alone and do not injure his busi- 
ness. When the disaster comes, when the explosion takes 
place, no man shows more serenity of mind, provided 
you leave him the police to protect him, his family, and 
his chattels. 

Why the mob has ruled Paris so often, and twice burned 
parts of it, in 1848 and in 1870, and why France ac- 
claimed every new ruler imposed on her, is not a difficult 
question to answer. 

Let us proceed and look for other factors of political 
prosperity and peace. What are our peasants and our 
workingmen, our *' horny-handed tillers of the soil " and 
our artisans ? 

Our peasant, very much like our bourgeois, has only 
one political creed : that his crop should be protected by 
the state. And here again our cocked-hatted gendarmef 
whose wonderful uniform and soldierly appearance strike 
the peasant as an awe-inspiring phenomenon of higher 
wisdom in Paris, appears behind the hedge of his field 
with a paternal sabre. '' Pay your taxes, and I will see 
to it that your wheat, your wine, and your potatoes are 
safely gathered and deposited in your cellar. Mind the 
state curate who looks after your soul, and prays daily to 
the Virgin and the saints to preserve you from evil ! 
Mind me ! Me, whom you see patrolling all highways, 
arresting people not possessed of regular and duly-stamped 
government 'papers,^ and collaring thieves and robbers ! 

110 



BONAPARTISM 

What would yon do without me, without my big cocked- 
hat, the emblem of law, and my big sabre, the emblem of 
order ? Are you not safe under my paternal protection 
in this world, and the curate^s recommendation for the 
other one ?" 

Our peasant, used to hard toil, and knowing by farm- 
ing experience the value of a copper penny, formerly 
unable to read or to sign his name, and now with no 
more knowledge of grammar than is necessary to farm- 
ing interests, has his own opinion on political matters. 
He, too, wants to be left alone, and be "protected by the 
state/' The gendarme, to his eyes, is the representative 
of the state, together with some other functionaries, as 
the prefect or the sub-prefect, the judge and the notary, 
all appointed in Paris. Further he does not inquire. 
He knows simply that they are sent here " by the au- 
thority, '' that they will enforce the laws made in Paris, 
and that he pays taxes to be protected by them — a mis- 
sion which they generally fulfil, whoever "the author- 
ity " may be. 

One measure of the Eevolution had a lasting influence 
on our peasant's destinies. The clergy and the nobility 
had owned two-thirds of France, and they virtually paid 
no taxes. The Revolution confiscated those lands and 
sold them to the peasant, thus dividing them up among 
the people. He knows this fact, and will hold to his 
land with unflinching tenacity. With only one ambition 
in life — "to own more land yef — he lives miserably, he 
and his family, without ever reading a book, with no 
enjoyment except a drink of wine at the village tavern 
after he has made a good bargain on his pig or his cow. 
Our peasant lives very much like a brute in his filthy 
cabin or little stone dwelling, under no other influence 
than that of the curate, if he is a faithful Catholic, or 

111 



BONAPARTISM 

of tlie town politician, if he belongs to the group of 
'' enlightened citizens/' and in beautiful ignorance of 
all laws and facts not immediately connected with farm- 
ing interests. Do not disturb the latter, and he will 
Yote as the curate or the town politician tells him, mind- 
ing his own business, selfish by instinct, saving every 
penny he can, and hiding his gold and silver pieces with 
prudent forethought. On him we cannot depend for 
preventing Paris dreamers or Paris adventurers from 
upsetting governments and taking possession of the 
ship's rudder. Hence the first and second Napoleonic 
empires and so many other political earthquakes. 

Our artisan, city workman, town laborer, or mechanic 
is quite another man. Excitable by nature, imperfectly 
schooled by the state, with enough education and intelli- 
gence to take an interest in political topics, this man is 
the victim of his leaders. Carried away by enthusiasm 
after listening to the speeches of demagogues who may 
advocate the most absurd measures, he will *^ manifest," 
as he calls it, in the streets, following the drums and a 
flag with the honest conviction that he is thus assert- 
ing his manhood and his rights. AVhat he has done the 
history of France in the last hundred years has shown. 
He is the man who, when fired to white heat by the 
Jacobin orators of the first revolution, '^cleaned up" 
all the prisons during that fearful week of September, 
who carried heads and hearts on patriotic pikes. He at 
all times, as during the Commune in 1848 and in 1870, 
is a "French patriot," and a thorn in the side of alt 
governments, who must either control him or be upset 
by him. He is the man who shouted " To Berlin \" in 
1870 ; who invaded the Tuileries again after Sedan, and 
who, after having shouted, ''Vive VEmjyereur l^^ since 
1852, whenever the third Napoleon happened to drive 

112 



BONAPARTISM 

through the streets, now wished to mob his wife. In 
Paris he is the worst citizen of all. Owning nothing 
except his daily wages, his pretensions are in inverse 
ratio to his political worth. He pays hardly any taxes 
at all, but he '^''runs^'' Paris as soon as the troops are 
withdrawn. With his ill - balanced mind, his empty 
phrases, and vehement expressions, he is at all times 
a danger to France, and it takes always an army in 
Paris to watch him even in ordinary times. Grape-shot 
alone can sober him down. Since the day when Bona- 
parte put an end to the first revolution by blowing him 
to pieces at his attack on the Louvre, our Paris workman 
has had to be shot down on several occasions — more than 
ten thousand of him in 1848 and twenty thousand in 
1870, according to French estimates. As soon as the 
state was prostrated by disaster in 1870, our Paris pa- 
triot, faithful to his destructive instincts, kept up his 
old traditions. 

We see in him the result of false education. His 
teachers were always — not priests, for he is a sceptic — 
but literary charlatans, from Rousseau, who began the 
education, to the present obscene writers who are now 
his favorites. Only those who have lived long enough 
near him to study his tastes can form an idea of his 
intellectual diet. Most horrible melodramas, with sen- 
sational and ludicrously tragic heroes, extolling the glories 
of war, the sweetness of revenge, and the luxuries of 
vice, are the most impressive lectures he hears. He de- 
rives from such trash most of his ^^ patriotic" gospel. 
No other working-class is more cynical and coarse ; it 
feeds on intellectual carrion, and has been flattered ever 
since Marat's time by every poj)ular French orator and 
writer. No man has done more harm to the French 
working-man than his latest prophet, Victor Hugo, whose 
H 113 



BONAPARTISM 

buncombe and clianvinistic utterances will be for a long 
time the worst enemies of peace. Carried away by 
Hugo's fiery eloquence, as formerly by the paradoxes of 
Rousseau, and the appeals of Danton, Robespierre, and 
Marat, the Paris artisan imagines that the world should 
kneel down before him because he is *' the people '' ; that 
he has no duties, only rights of all kinds. He is the 
man, in fine, who, taking advantage of the moral weak- 
ness of Trance, has made of the last hundred years of 
French history the most abominable political record of 
any nation. 

Among these millions of various men of four different 
castes, the products of state paternalism, there are scat- 
tered all over France some thousands of other men with 
higher ideals, with nobler aims, as generous and sincere 
as the best of mankind, but powerless before these masses ; 
and, as history shows, this has been the political result 
of a doctrine which had intrusted for centuries to the 
state the regulation of all human affairs ; till the state, 
having absorbed all the vitality of individual minds, has 
reduced every man to the role of a political dummy. 

On whom, indeed, shall we depend, when the first 
revolution is ended, to subdue mobs, re-establish order, 
and stop the slaughter ? On one man alone — on Bona- 
parte alone ! And with this conviction in her heart, 
France makes a complete political somersault. It re- 
establishes absolute monarchy under an emperor, abol- 
ishes its butchering republic, and turns back to the point 
from which it started. This performance takes place 
with lightning rapidity, for everybody is tired of dramas, 
and the country is poorer and more miserable than ever. 
A fit end and a mathematical result of paternal repub- 
lics. What can a nation do without citizens ? What 
decision can it make, when every individual man in the 

114 



BONAPARTISM 

country has lost the habit of thinking for himself, and 
has been deprived by the state of the power to criticise, 
amend, and correct ? Here is a man who will do what 
the people of the country are incapable of doing ! Thus 
imperialism, Csesarism, and military dictatorship is a 
foreordained conclusion. 

The man in this case was not a Frenchman ; he was 
born in Corsica, in an Italian island, of Italian parents. 
His father^s family was a patrician family from Tuscany, 
living in Florence in the twelfth century, then at Sar- 
zana, near Genoa, where some of its members led an ob- 
scure life as aldermen and notaries. '^My origin,^^ as 
he says himself, in his Memoirs, '' caused me to be con- 
sidered by all Italians as their countryman." 

In 1529 the family settled in Corsica. His mother, 
Laetitia Remolino, was a native of the island, a stingy, 
parsimonious, energetic woman, who imparted to him her 
indomitable will, her clear-sighted, practical turn of 
mind, and also her pluck. For they lived in troubled 
times, in a wild land where civil disturbances degenerated 
at once to guerilla skirmishes and private vendettas. The 
island was annexed to France by military and brutal coer- 
cion, on the 22d of May, 1769, and he was born on the 
15th of August, 1769. 

In his early youth he, as a foreigner, hated France 
and its people. Writing to Paoli, the Corsican chieftain, 
who fought against France for the independence of the 
island, to whom, after his military education was ended, 
he publicly addressed an open letter, he says: ^'I was 
born when our country was perishing. Thirty thousand 
Frenchmen were vomited on our coasts, drowning the 
throne of liberty in streams of blood ; that is the odious 
spectacle which I saw. The cries of the dying, the 
lamentations of the oppressed, the tears of despair have 

115 



BONAPARTISM 

surrounded my cradle from, the day of my birth. I will 
blacken with the brush of infamy those who deserted our 
common cause, those vile hearts which were corrupted by 
sordid greed/' He writes in the same vein to Bottafuoco, 
a member of the Constituent Assembly, and the man who 
had caused the annexation of Corsica to France. Not 
a French bourgeois, he, with his black hair falling on 
his shoulders, piercing, quick glance of the eyes, and 
resolute military bearing; nor a French "patriot," with 
his contempt for " the people " of Paris and his taciturn 
demeanor. He looks on, saying little, but observing 
much. In his opinion, those crowds of titled cowards, of 
eloquent imbeciles, of ruffians and human hyenas would 
never make a republic nor a parliamentary government 
with constitutional monarchy. In this he certainly was 
not mistaken, as future events in French history will de- 
monstrate, even after his part on earth is finished. 

Buy off or bribe all those who are worth buying, and 
cowhide the rest I Such is the practical policy to be 
adopted. Above all, impose silence; which is an easy 
task for him if he ever takes a hand in this French game. 
With no individual moral strength in them, with no capa- 
ble leaders, he thinks they will run away and not stand 
up to grape-shot. This he sees clearly. They are not 
like his Corsican brethren, used since boyhood, with their 
indomitable, revengeful temper, to tramp through lonely 
hills, a gun on their shoulder and a dagger at their belt, 
in search of their enemy. 

He sees another certainty. These men are intelligent 
beings, not mere calves; and, like all other men, they 
possess a latent power which is like the force hidden in a 
ton of coal. In the hands of a professional engineer it 
can be made to lift heavy weights, crush stone, saw lum- 
ber, or perform other practical work. To this end, French 

116 



BONAPARTISM 

vanity itself, the love of national theatricals and national 
fireworks, may be used with wonderful effect. Their 
national performances are a shameful failure, except on 
the Ehine, where they have crushed the Prussian military 
and bureaucratic machine in a fit of rage against German 
interference. Grive them now military glory ; let us conceal 
the national vulture under the appearance of a proud 
imperial eagle ; let them believe that that eagle is not an 
ignoble buzzard feeding on corpses, but a marvellous 
phenomenon of nature descending from the clouds, or 
other Jovian heights, to destroy foreign ostriches, Ger- 
man boobies, and such inferior beings which we will 
assimilate and upon which we can grow fat ! All these 
men love distinctions and wealth, notwithstanding their 
Jesuitical and hypocritical republican professions of faith 
and all their solemn oaths ! Give them better meat, and 
they will at once abandon republican misery and become 
all Imperialists. Their paternal state has drilled them 
to obedience and has killed in them every spark of self- 
government. We shall make of them pompous ambas- 
sadors and diplomats, magnificent officers, brilliant gen- 
erals, even princes and kings, and re-establish the rule of 
the survival of the fittest; for fools we cannot use, but 
intelligent, perspicacious scoundrels like Talleyrand, 
Pouch e, and their kindred will make excellent tools. 
Even such men as Sieyes, the professional architect of 
political edifices, can be used. He drew up republican 
charters, made a specialty of them ; he can now draw up 
an imperial constitution, and organize senators with gilt 
buttons and embroidered uniforms. 

Prench nobility being of no earthly value, too decayed 
and too weak for possible repair, we shall make a new 
one ; for Prance can never get along without titles, 
decorations, crosses, multicolor trappings and uniforms. 

117 



BONAPARTISM 

Paternal education and innate vanity will make any 
government witliont them a hopeless task. This fact is 
clear to a sharp Oorsican eye, not used to French literary 
spectacles and academical microscopes ; so clear that an 
immediate addition to our old stock of stage properties 
will even seem a most important measure. Old ducal 
and baronial trappings somewhat out of fashion should 
be overhauled, mended, washed, and ironed anew ; but a 
"Legion of Honor" should be instituted at once. Will 
not every Frenchman, being a political child grown up 
under paternal state wisdom, be most desirous to ob- 
tain a piece of red ribbon, as a sign that paternal state 
has recognized his merit and given him a piece of cake ? 
For will not all unruly children stop their noise and re- 
frain from mischief in sight of paternal pie or cake ? 
A most admirable, cheap, and sensible French paternal 
institution, invented by an Italian, Bonaparte, who counted 
Machiavelli among his countrymen, and who understands 
to perfection human nature in France. A cheap and a 
wonderful institution, I say, prospering and thriving more 
than ever to-day in republican France, which, at very lit- 
tle cost, allows the paternal state by playing on its chil- 
dren's weakness to obtain a maximum of effort and obe- 
dience at a minimum of cost. The Equality motto we 
can keep well enough ; it does not mean anything. 

Thus we shall have now kings of Naples and West- 
phalia, princes, dukes, and barons ! Nay, a Prince of 
Moskowa ; and some other Frenchman a Prince of Dal- 
matia, or a Duke of Elchingen, and a hundred more of 
them, with much money attached to the titles. 

What a swift change on the national stage ! All our 
Phrygian caps, fraternal pikes, guillotine, and other stage 
properties disappear suddenly at the sound of a whistle ! 
The actors stopping suddenly in their grandiloquent 

118 



BONAPARTISM 

tirades, rushing to clear the stage of republican insignia, 
and reappearing immediately in new attire, embroidered 
uniforms, with oriental curved sabres dangling at their 
heels ! Wonderful to behold ! Twenty-one imperial 
prefects and forty-two imperial magistrates out of one 
hundred and thirty-one Republicans who voted for be- 
heading ! Fouch6 in the garb of a cabinet minister ; 
also soul-overseer Talleyrand ! Jean Bon Saint Andre, 
an imperial functionary! Even Drouet, the '^patriot" 
who stopped the king's flight at Varennes with a lantern, 
now bowing humbly before majesty, applies for an office 
too, which he gets — of sub-prefect ! 

'^ At the first move of the hand," says Taine, speaking 
of his own countrymen with true historic veracity, '^'^all 
Frenchmen have thrown themselves at his feet in obedi- 
ent attitude, and they remain there as if the attitude 
were natural ! — the small people, peasants and soldiers, 
with animal faithfulness ; the great people, dignitaries 
and functionaries, with Byzantine servility. From the 
Republicans comes no resistance ; on the contrary, it is 
among them that he finds the best tools for his reign, 
senators, deputies, councillors of state, judges, and ad- 
ministrators of all degrees. He has found out at once, 
under their cant of liberty and equality, their arbitrary 
instincts, their craving for authority, their need of com- 
manding, of being the first even in secondary positions, 
and, moreover, among most of them their love of money 
and pleasure. The difference is small between a dele- 
gate of the committee of public safety and an imperial 
minister, prefect, or sub-prefect, for it is always the same 
man with two costumes, first in a carmagnole jacket, later 
on in an embroidered coat.'' * 



* Taine. Le Regime Moderne, p. 73, 
119 



BONAPARTISM 

Not a score of them grumble. Of Lafayette, now in 
an Austrian prison since he galloped across the French 
boundary away from his command, Bonaparte speaks 
rather contemptuously. ''^Lafayette," says he, '^'^is a 
political idiot, who will be eternally the dupe of men 
and circumstances."* 

That he understood his people, their combustible nat- 
ure when touched with the torch of enthusiasm, their 
natural selfishness and greed for childish distinctions 
distributed by the state, their total lack of individual 
freedom, their inborn passion for posing, for applause, 
and their urgent need of order ; that he knew how little 
opposition he would find in France to usurpation and 
despotic rule, and how little Frenchmen cared for lib- 
erty, equality, fraternity ; that he had calculated rightly 
in his estimate of their worthlessness as political men 
and citizens, and of their real intrinsic value as intelli- 
gent tools, has been fully demonstrated by history. No 
despot was ever more popular anywhere. 

He gave them what they wanted — despotic authority 
over other men, empty titles and honors, other people's 
money, and blood enough to wade in on the ^Miighways 
of glory." What sufferings they imposed, how many 
hearts of women and men they broke, how many homes 
they ruined, how many physical and moral tortures they 
inflicted, no Frenchman ever deigned to consider until 
lately. When in more modern times their ^'Napole- 
onic glory " had ended again in shame and disaster at 
Sedan, and when they had felt for the third time in 
this century the rude hand of a foreign constable, a few 
voices in France began to question the policy of nation- 
al highway robbery. 

* Taine. Le Begime Moderne, p. 73. 
130 



BONAPARTISM 

Between 1804 and 1815, according to Taine's careful 
estimates, one million seven hundred thousand French- 
men and two millions of other races left their corpses 
on the fields of Napoleonic victories and defeats, with 
the ultimate result of two invasions and surrenders of 
France, a reduced territory, and the eternal execration 
of French rule by all nations. His nephew and succes- 
sor continued this policy, applauded by all France, to 
the day when he achieved a similar result. From all 
these battles and slaughters, from all these hecatombs 
of victims of French incapacity for self-government, 
nothing remains to-day except international hatred and 
the skeleton of a great soldier incased in a huge marble 
tomb under the dome of the Invalides, at which tourists 
gaze with wonder, as they would at the remains of a 
mastodon or some other gigantic monster. 



CHAPTER VI 

ROYAL RESURRECTIOiq" 

The curtain has fallen on the Napoleonic drama ; the 
great Emperor is gone ; the great manager of the French 
estate has finally been expelled, not by the owners, but 
by the neighbors ; and the owners have become so help- 
less as a nation that the neighbors, not they, decide who 
shall be the next ruler in France. In reality, there never 
had been any change in the French political doctrine, 
and none will take place now. The state has been om- 
nipotent at all times, and will remain so, whoever is at 
the helm. Its army of functionaries will continue to 
control and govern, to think and decide, for every man, 
woman, and child. To what an abject political condition 
every one has been reduced by paternal state authority 
can be seen by what happens now in France. 

The two brothers of the beheaded king had been trav- 
elling for almost twenty years, roaming over Europe, 
plotting, intriguing, remonstrating, and protesting in 
all the courts of Europe, with no success whatever. 
But now that the hurricane is over, France will see 
their august faces again. 

On the 20th of February, 1791, Louis Stanislas 
Xavier, brother of Louis XVI. and Count of Provence, 
born at Versailles in 1755, swore a solemn oath, accord- 

132 



ROYAL RESURRECTION 

ing to French state records, that he would never leave 
the soil of his beloved France ; for the paternal state was 
watching the king and the royal family at that time, 
and objected to their rnnning away. But on the 20th 
of June — according to historical records — Louis Stan- 
islas Xavier, first prince of the blood, secretly decamped, 
and turned up safely at Brussels, and at the head of six 
thousand French noblemen, who, like him, had all run 
away, he followed the Duke of Brunswick, who was in- 
vading France with one hundred and fifty thousand Ger- 
mans. Brunswick, like many of his officers and men, had 
served under Frederick the Great, and Prussians military 
prestige was at its height. French patriots were to be 
hanged and the old French monarchy restored ; but the 
wonderful German army, with its unparalleled discipline 
and war experience, was shamefully beaten. Under the 
command of two self-made republican generals, Dumou- 
riez and Kellermann, the rough and badly drilled French 
recruits defeated the German army at Valmy. French 
nobility and Louis Stanislas Xavier ran away again, leav- 
ing the German allies to their fate. So panic-stricken 
were they that when they arrived at Verdun they de- 
cided to abandon some personal baggage in order to run 
faster. Louis Stanislas Xavier left all his papers and a 
certain pocket-book, in which he had written many names 
of royalist friends in Paris. For this negligence of the 
doble coward — future king of France — these friends and 
correspondents had to pay with their heads, being imme- 
diately summoned before patriotic judges who held in 
their hands the evidence of treason. 

French patriotic guns, under direction of Dumouriez 
and Kellermann (the latter appointed later on Duke of 
Valmy by Napoleon), were shattering to pieces the mili- 
tary prestige of the invaders, and also the prospects of 

123 



ROYAL RESURRECTION 

French royalty. Thus only eight years after the death 
of Frederick the Great, his army, which the paternal 
Prussian state had considered invincible, proved to be, 
like all military establishments, an unsafe foundation 
for any state to build on ; for the French republican 
armies conquered not only Belgium and Holland, but 
also the German Rhine ; and the Prussian bureaucratic 
state, unable to stand these unexpected defeats, was 
compelled to abandon the latter to France by the treaty 
of Basel to avoid complete ruin. A rather glorious fact 
for poor republican France, torn a,sunder by the Revo- 
lution, with a disorganized army under untried leaders ; 
a very inglorious one for German militarism, breaking 
down so miserably at the height of its perfection a few 
years after the death of its greatest general. 

A wonderful period in French history, this Restora- 
tion ! Napoleon, having been removed to Elba by the 
European powers, all France is now at the feet of " our 
beloved king," who, since he has ceased to travel, is be- 
coming very fat, alarmingly obese. His first perform- 
ance, though against foreign advice, is now to hand over 
the realm to his church and his nobility. Like buzzards, 
they have all flocked back to feed on poor France, the 
king leading the way. All the lands which the peasants 
bought from the paternal state being declared forfeit, 
because the owners were plotting in foreign countries 
against France, shall now be returned to the clergy and 
the nobility without any compensation whatever. Im- 
agine the state of mind of our French peasant who 
bought, twenty years ago, with gold and silver pieces 
hoarded in woollen stockings, about one -half of the 
French territory, and who has toiled every day since, 
with due French thrift and industry, on those fields 
made productive by his labor ! Now, after Marengo, 

124 



ROYAL RESURRECTION 

Austerlitz, "Wagram, and Jena, come onr royal and cleri- 
cal buzzards, returning from Germany, England, and 
other parts, having been too pusillanimous to fight 
against patriots and the great emperor, only watching 
from safe retreats the corpses of our sons and brothers 
rottins: on battle-fields. Is this to be endured ? Is this 
what they call ^"^ Restoration^' ? 

Yes ! This is the Restoration, and all France will 
submit to it; not only does it do so, but ^'^ Byzantine 
servility,^' and such words, cannot express the attitude 
of the nation. The " legislative body," whose mission 
it is since 1795 to regulate the internal business affairs 
of France, calls on majesty at Compiegne, with "lyric" 
expressions of love and devotion to the throne. Under 
English and Russian pressure, majesty consents to give 
a constitution to his beloved subjects, but everything 
that has taken place since the Revolution shall be de- 
clared a myth, a fiction, a dream. And France submits 
with manifestations of deep gratitude. 

Suddenly and unexpectedly all the royal theatrical 
display tumbles down, as if struck by lightning, in a 
chaotic mass. Panic-stricken, French nobility and clergy 
depart in a hurry with loud yells of anguish, and royal 
trunks are suddenly hauled to light with most remark- 
able agility, for news has come that Bonaparte has left 
Elba and has landed with a few followers at Cannes ! 
What will majesty do now ? "What will French nobility 
do — they, the legal representatives of French chivalry ? 
What they always did in times of crisis ! Run away 
with utmost speed, as they always did and always will do 
on similar occasions. The king arrives in Ghent before 
Bonaparte has reached Paris, beating the latter in one 
way at least — rapidity of locomotion. 

This is no longer the old royal comedy, no longer a 

125 



ROYAL RESURRECTION 

republican tragedy or a Napoleonic drama ; this is now 
French national opera - bouffe ; but France objects to 
nothing. The state has destroyed every spark of politi- 
cal manhood or dignity among the people and the rulers. 
Besides, it is getting used to such unexpected theatrical 
changes, and has lost all political shame. It has already 
acquired, like the Romans of the decadence, the habit 
of acclaiming everybody or anybody as its father. The 
same Paris that shouted '* Long live the King !" in 
the forenoon make themselves hoarse in the afternoon 
shouting ^' Long live Napoleon V The habit was taken, 
and will remain a national one in France, a practical 
solution of all difficulties. What difference does it make 
after all to the great mass of the nation ? Is not the 
paternal state indestructible and supreme ? We shall 
have the same cocked-hatted gendarmes and police, the 
same ubiquitous functionaries, judges, and civil officers, 
all appointed from above by the state ! Do we not pay 
taxes to be protected and governed by the state ? 

Here are the fruits of the paternal tree which has ex- 
tended its deadly shade over all human energies. Firmly 
rooted in the populistic doctrine that the state should 
regulate human activity, it has now stretched its branches 
in all directions, causing moral and political lethargy 
under its protecting shade. Consequently, the nation 
being now but a tool, a passive instrument in the hands 
of the state, other men than Frenchmen must regulate 
its affairs, and die to re-establish order in France. 

The old Imperial Guard will fight, but not for the 
nation, only for its war-god, with conspicuous bravery ; 
but they do not die at all so dramatically as histrionic 
Victor Hugo and other lyric worshippers of national 
humbug assert. For Cambronne himself, their com- 
mander, although gallantly refusing to surrender, lives 

126 



ROYAL RESURRECTION 

a great many years afterwards, having been only wounded 
and taken by the English. He lives even in such re- 
markably good health that in 1818, bowing respectfully 
before majesty, he gets himself appointed to the office 
of ''Royal Lieutenant-General of the Realm ^^ — a fair il- 
Instration of French fickleness and of French literary 
contempt for historical truth. 

The struggle is ended ; the foreign armies reoccupy 
Paris. Now is the time for our vagrant royalty and 
nobility to repack trunks again, and reappear among 
their countrymen. The great plunderer is gone on an 
English war -ship towards South African climes, the 
French paternal police is at work with the help of for- 
eign soldiers, and everything is now lovely in the City 
of Light. 

Fouche, once a priest, a man endowed by nature with 
an uncommon dose of shrewdness, and admitted by 
general verdict to be the champion rascal of France ! 
— he, the very demagogue, the high functionary of the 
patriotic republic, who organized massacres and who 
stood in Lyons, opera-glass in hand, at the window of 
the government palace to watch the execution of two 
hundred and ten men and women — he, Fouche, who, 
with Carrier, Saint-Just, and other butchers, surpassed 
Nero in crimes, who demanded so vociferously the exe- 
cution of Louis XVL, our king's own brother, and voted 
for his death ; who then became chief of Napoleonic 
police, whom Bonaparte despised and even dismissed 
once for treason, reappointing him because he found 
nobody so able to perform dirty work — he, Fouche, shall 
now become one of the props of French royalty. 

The other man is Talleyrand, the most cynical, un- 
principled scamp in European diplomatic history. He 
was originally a Catholic bishop, then overseer of souls, 

127 



ROYAL RESURRECTION 

who, as Carlyle saj^s, blessed our new revolutionary 
tricolor flag '^witli two hundred pieces of crown-shaved 
white calicoes standing on the steps of fatherland^s al- 
tar'^ — a man who, being Minister of Foreign Affairs of 
the French Republic, was dismissed under the Direc- 
toire, then conspired with Bonaparte to overthrow the 
Republic, and then, as Bonaparte^s Secretary of Foreign 
Affairs, plotted the overthrow of his benefactor and 
master, and whom Napoleon one day asked contemptu- 
ously, "How much did they pay you to tell me such 
a lie ?" He, this Talleyrand, shall now plead for royalty 
before Czar Alexander, and, if successful, be well re- 
warded and paid. 

Thus Louis XVIII. was re-established on the throne 
of France. He died at last in 1824, kept on this throne 
by foreign bayonets during ten years, leaving no chil- 
dren ; and his brother, the Count d^Artois, younger 
brother of Louis XVI. and grandson of Louis XV., the 
maintainer of Versailles harems, succeeds as head of the 
state. He, too, is an old "traveller," having safely re- 
treated at all critical times without showing the least in- 
clination for heroism of any kind. One Russian em- 
press, Catharine II., famed as a witty and able woman, 
received him once, in 1791, at St. Petersburg, whither the 
noble prince had gone to solicit aid against his country- 
men. She declined to help him, receiving him rather 
coldly, but presenting him with a sword ; whether or 
not as an ironical mark of esteem, history does not say. 

After that visit he had departed for England, then at 
war with France, and had there been called upon by a 
delegation of royalist inhabitants of the Vendee, where 
priests, fanatic peasants, and a few country noblemen 
had decided to rebel. An English fleet carried him to 
the Vendean coast in August, 1795, where the insurrec- 

128 



ROYAL RESURRECTION 

tion had begun ; but on reaching the place of landing, 
our noble prince of the blood positively declined to 
leave the English ship. Charrette, the insurrectionist 
leader^ tried in vain to persuade him to land. ''^Put 
5^ourself at our head, and our peasants, who are waiting 
for you in strong columns, will march on to Paris and 
hang the demagogues." Useless entreaties ! He turns 
back without even touching French soil, to live at ease 
in England, appointing poor Cadoudal, in his brother's 
name, Lieutenant-General of France. 

In 1814, after Bonaparte is gone, he rushes forward 
and arrives in Paris, to be received by Talleyrand with all 
due reverence. He appoints himself " Commander-in- 
Chief " — for the war is now over — and when his brother 
Louis XVIII. arrives, he proudly takes his seat near the 
throne. But as soon as the news reaches Paris that 
Bonaparte has left Elba, he decamps hastily to join his 
brother at Ghent. 

What this man did every one knows: intrusted by 
France with state authority, he had no other aim but to 
establish the omnipotence of the Jesuits and the privi- 
leges of the clergy and nobility. His contemptible char- 
acter was visible in all his acts. Finding the charter 
granted by his brother at the dictation of the allies an 
obstacle to his plans, by one stroke of his royal pen he 
abolished it. The editors of all the liberal newspapers, 
fearing for their liberty and their lives, proclaimed rev- 
olution ; and '^the king of France " departed in haste 
for England, there to finish his disgraceful existence. If 
the revolt which expelled Charles X. was certainly justi- 
fied, the mob revolution which expelled Louis Philippe 
in 1848, and launched France again in the old path to 
disaster, was a new blot on the history of the nation. A 
constitutional ruler of high personal character, obliged 
I 129 



ROYAL RESURRECTION 

to abandon the country to political adventurers, to bad 
republicans, and Avorse Bonapartists, Louis Philippe had 
done nothing to deserve French animosity. He had good 
personal qualities, sterling common - sense. But the 
French press, to whom the paternal state had now con- 
ceded all liberty, used its right to revile him before the 
people ; they held up to the masses the memory of " the 
glories of the first republic.^'' French chauvinism could 
not pardon him his abhorrence of useless wars, his dislike 
of military show, his friendship for England, and his un- 
willingness to launch the country into adventures which 
he wisely considered disastrous for France. His popular- 
ity was killed by his good sense, for his countrymen had 
none, as the sequel has shown. From political immoral- 
ity, caused by state omnipotence, new modern diseases had 
grown, individual depravity, coarse materialism, and other 
national ills, culminating, as we shall see, in national de- 
gradation with the red flag as the national emblem. 



CHAPTER VII 

FREKCH POPULISM 

Between 1792 and 1848, a period of fifty -six years, 
France established and npset its paternal government 
eight times. There was an absolute monarchy, then a 
constitutional monarchy, then a republic, then the em- 
pire, then monarchy for a while, then the empire again 
for three months, then reactionary monarchy, and then 
constitutional monarchy on the English pattern. And 
whatever label was pasted on the paternal weathercock, 
the nation always applauded, or at least refrained from 
expressing popular indignation. But a new change now 
becomes necessary, according to the leaders of public 
opinion, for constitutional monarchy ''^ makes nobody 
happy.'' 

'^Corruption is too great among the upper classes." 
Paris says so ; and indeed the leading classes of France, 
modernized now in their habits and wants, have inaugu- 
rated a new kind of oppression — money power — which 
the paternal state is called upon to remove. According 
to public opinion of that time, the newly born money 
power is openly buying national distinctions, seats in the 
House of Lords, and control of railroads, which are gov- 
ernment enterprises fostered by the state ; bribing judges, 
members of parliament, newspaper editors, and the lead- 

131 



FRENCH POPULISM 

ing public men. Paternal railroads are, besides, so 
shockingly administered that, in 1848, everybody who 
nses them is afraid of his life ; for official investigations 
showed that the disasters and slaughters which took place 
were due not to accident, but to the incapacity of em- 
ployes. More than a hundred corpses were dug out of 
the ruins of the train to Versailles, among them the 
corpse of Dumont d^Urville, the great French admiral 
and geographical explorer. When France began to build 
railroads, the paternal state had necessarily to interfere 
in the interest of the "public welfare." "Was it not the 
state's legitimate duty to see that railroads were well 
made, by competent, diplomaed engineers, and controlled 
by responsible companies ? But the result was that the 
paternal state being only an ideal overseer, the charters 
and railway privileges were granted by bribed politicians 
to " syndicates,'^ or "rings," who built bad roads and 
appointed incapable men, while the people has to pay ex- 
orbitant prices for paternal transportation and for the 
blessing of a state monopoly. This led to a further 
result ; for in 1847 it caused open rebellion, so that troops 
from Arras, Douai, and Valenciennes were summoned in 
haste to protect certain railroad stations from destruction 
by the mob. 

The fact is, that a new era was dawning on the world. 
Two new factors had appeared in political and social 
evolution : the money power and the newspaper power. 
In France, after 1840, everybody speculates, buying and 
selling "shares." The French politician — a new phe- 
nomenon — had made his appearance, quite different from 
the old-time Jacobin demagogue. With his oratorical 
utterances in printed form, or in open meetings, he had 
already found out that political popularity was a source 
of great wealth whenever state interference blocked 

133 



FRENCH POPULISM 

the way in industrial enterprises — a discovery which 
the New World also made one day in Washington 
by investigation of the Credit Mobilier. In France, 
where the state is more powerful than in America, there 
seemed in those times no limit to politicians^ prosperity, 
according to the prevailing public opinion. Rivalries and 
jealousies led daily to the discovery of '^jobs,^' showing 
clearly to the people that its leaders were selling paternal 
favors and protection to the highest bidder. The par- 
liamentarism which was imported from England should 
make the people politically happy ; but it does not. Rev- 
olution is again inevitable. Why ? 

In the first place, our paternal state, with its French 
House of Commons and its French House of Lords, 
persists as formerly in extending over all citizens its 
tutelary hand. When, for instance, in 1844, the state 
wishes to borrow one hundred millions, parliament is 
bribed, and the government instructed to sell all the 
bonds at a bargain to Rothschild, who receives them at 
eighty-four. Then ^^the state," being able to decide 
suddenly several questions of foreign policy, our politi- 
cians manipulate "foreign policy," in understanding 
with Rothschild, and the bonds are sold on the Stock 
Exchange with enormous profit due to " foreign policy." 
Rothschild thereby gets control of the Paris-Brussels 
railroad shares, which the firm owns to this day. It is 
subsequently found that the most influential members 
of parliament, and the newspapers too, have been bought 
up in this and other operations. France was digging 
great canals to facilitate inland transportation ; and, as 
in the case of the railroads, the state takes the matter 
in hand, appointing favorite companies to perform the 
work, and the people is robbed. 

Financial dishonesty is so general that a member of 

133 



FRENCH POPULISM 

parliament, Leon de Maleville, calls Prime Minister 
Guizot, in open session, '' an abettor of thieves "; al- 
though Gnizot himself is a conscientious man. £mile 
de Girardin, the editor of La Presse, an opposition 
newspaper, calls the Minister of Justice a tartufe, 
accuses the state of selling seats in the House of Lords 
for eighty thousand francs a seat, and of having made 
one million two hundred thousand francs by altering 
post-of&ce regulations. Lagrange, the Inspector of 
Government Hospitals, swindled the inmates of these 
state establishments ; he did it so long that at last he 
has to be convicted and sent to the penitentiary. The 
French institution of state notaries, whose number is 
strictly limited by law, and without whose co-operation 
no sale of real estate, no important contract can be 
registered or made, has become in popular opinion an 
institution of embezzlers ; the office, being very lucrative, 
is sold sometimes as high as a million francs ; and in 
five years over one hundred state notaries become em- 
bezzlers, or disappear with private funds. Teste, the 
president of the Court of Cassation — the highest 
court in France — formerly Minister of Public Works, 
and General Cubieres, a peer and former Secretary of 
War, are both sentenced as swindlers in relation to the 
state grant of the Gouhenans mines. The father of 
Cubidres had been a page of Louis XV. and an equerry 
of Louis XVI.* All these facts are notorious and 
public, and before them the paternal state is powerless ; 
with its grants, monopolies, contracts, and prequisites, 
it is now the prey of all those who are intelligent enough 
to secure a seat in its tutelary shade. Thus French 
populism, working for the public welfare in theory, has 

* Bachelet and Dezobry. Cubieres. 
134 



FRENCH POPULISM 

practically put a preminm on individual rascality. And 
the people knows it. 

The opposition, sitting in the parliament with Thiers, 
Ledru-Eollin, de Girardin, and a score of others, never 
think for a moment of removing the primary cause of 
all these evils. Frenchmen are so accustomed to the 
ubiquitous control of the state that nobody proposes to 
deliver private enterprises from state interference, to 
abolish the many state monopolies against which there 
is no possible redress, and which rob the nation, directly 
or indirectly, under the plea of working for the interest 
of all. Nobody perceives that the more you allow the 
state to manage railroads and canals, to make contracts 
with builders, to grant valuable concessions and char- 
ters, and to influence the Stock Exchange by parliamen- 
tary or cabinet decisions, the wider you open the door 
to injustice, to abuses, to venality, and political corruj)- 
tion, and the quicker you hasten the popular reaction 
and the revolutionary explosion. But France is too 
much crazed by traditional doctrines, preached by vision- 
ary prophets and demagogues, to allow free competition, 
laws of supply and demand, individual methods, and 
other self-regulating forces to take their natui*al course. 
The people sees only one thing : that the evils exist, 
that the demoralization has become general among the 
middle classes as well as among the upper classes ; and, 
taking recourse to its old methods, it now calls upon the 
paternal state to remove the evils. The first step is 
naturally to upset constitutional monarchy. 

But there is another evil at the bottom of all these 
troubles, which has now broken out with such virulence 
that national superficiality and short-sightedness alone 
can ignore its fearful ravages. With the increase of all 
means of education among the middle and lower classes, 

135 



FRENCH POPULISM 

French literature, which formerly circulated only among 
the upper stratum of society, has become common prop- 
erty. Books, pamphlets, and newspapers, which in former 
years reached only aristocratic readers, can now be pur- 
chased and read by all ; and the poison that was con- 
tained under the old regime in silly, pretentious, fash- 
ionable novels and sonnets, becomes now a wide stream 
of foul, infecting matter, overflowing all Paris, poison- 
ing half-educated minds, lowering more and more the 
nation's tastes and ideals. After 1840, literary carrion 
becomes the favorite food of the middle and lower 
classes, its stench being hidden under the flowers of 
rhetoric and the clever style of the writer. The modern 
French literary axiom, that a writer should have no other 
aim but to express sensations and impressions without 
regard for their more or less refined nature, that he 
should have no moral duty, no interest in the improve- 
ment of man, and that art for art's sake is the object of 
an artist, was now asserting itself under the leadership 
of a galaxy of popular authors. 

Thus begins, during the reign of Louis Philippe, this 
flow of putrid literature, which has spread from Paris ^| 

ever since the days of Eugene Sue, George Sand, Jules 
Sandeau, de Musset, and other '' admirable " — now half- 
forgotten — writers ; a putrid literature in which Zola and 
other modern authors now shine with the same phosphor- 
escent light to the enthusiastic applause of Parisian 
critics, fashionable Europe, and universal cosmopolitan 
dandyism ; a putrid literature which, if it were only a 
matter of taste like other Paris fashions, could be con- 
sidered simply as a ridiculous product of French civili- 
zation, but which, by inciting all the half - educated 
classes to murder and plunder, to public obscenity, 
under the pretence that '^property is theft,'' that '^mar- 

136 



FRENCH POPULISM 

riage is immoral/' that " society is rotten/^ that '^ women 
are born free/' becomes more deadly than cholera, more 
inimical to mankind than venomous cobras or tubercu- 
losis. What Eugene Sue, George Sand, de Musset, and 
such people think the proper relations should be between 
modern men and women may certainly interest their 
friends ; and nobody has a right to interfere by assum- 
ing the functions of puritanical censorship — the state 
certainly less than anybody else, for it could proscribe, 
upon the same principle of public welfare, the very best 
works of reform. But when such utterances lead to a 
general negation by the people of all higher standards 
necessary to a peaceable existence on earth, when, in con- 
sequence of such teachings, culminating in the maxims 
of Proudhon, individual thrift, perseverance in work, 
economy, and the sense of duty itself run the risk of 
being persecuted and proscribed, it may well be time 
for individual man to establish for himself a quarantine 
against such prophets, especially when the very temple 
of the new religion, Victor Hugo's " City of Light," has, 
as a consequence of such a gospel, presented to the 
world the most ghastly spectacle of political disease and 
of constant butcheries. 

In countries where no paternal state exists, where the 
government is restrained from interfering in everybody's 
affairs, restrained from controlling or paralyzing indi- 
vidual activity, restrained from leading a man to fort- 
une by delegating to him powers and authority, or by 
conferring on him titles, decorations, and distinctions of 
every kind ; where it is restrained from injuring a man's 
prospects by regulations and edicts affecting his purse, 
his career, or the career of his children, in such a coun- 
try the political and social gospel preached by French 
radicalism cannot produce immediate demoralization. 

137 



FRENCH POPULISM 

But in a country where the state is omnipotent, where 
a dozen politicians can affect all values on the Stock 
Exchange, designate certain men as fit for distinctions, 
decide the building of railroads and canals, the open- 
ing up and the working of mines, and patronize or an- 
tagonize newspapers, manufacturers, trading corpora- 
tions, etc., the struggle for life among the citizens 
presents a different aspect. Ingenuity, persevering work, 
industry, and all those qualities which characterize a 
man of real worth, cease to be the true factors of indi- 
vidual prosperity; tact and pleasing manners — often 
concealing real indifference to wrongs — shrewd skill in 
obtaining protection, and cleverness in securing patrons, 
become the true sources of a citizen's success. If his 
future fortune, his career, his fame, depend upon the 
state, shall he not do his utmost and strain every nerve 
in order to secure bureaucratic good-will ? Is not his 
intimacy with the Minister of Public Works, the Min- 
ister of Public Transportation, the Minister of Fine 
Arts, the Minister of Public Instruction, much more 
valuable to him if he wishes to secure a contract, to be 
appointed railroad manager, to have his pictures adver- 
tised by a purchase for the state's gallery, or to be 
selected as a professor in a state college, than years of 
patient and meritorious efforts ? 

Now, how does French literature react in 1848 on all 
minds that have been educated by the paternal state ? 

The connection is clear. Has not every man the am- 
bition to " succeed in life "? And in his efforts to secure 
wealth, distinctions, and reputation leading to wealth, 
does he not strain his eyes to discover the shortest and 
surest road ? "Whence does he derive information on 
the subject ? Is it not from the newspapers he reads, 
and from popular works which lie before him, and in- 

138 



FRENCH POPULISM 

form him on the moral situation of the country ? If the 
recognized experts in national psychology, the great ob- 
servers of social forces, the most intelligent writers on 
social life, have all come to the conclusion that the so- 
cial edifice is rotten, that corruption is general, that 
honest men have no chance in the general scramble, that 
" grabbing," not working, is the magic pass, what road 
will the citizen follow ? 

By such reasoning Paris decided in 1848 not only to 
dismiss the king, but to proclaim the socialistic com- 
mune. Its red flag has already been noticed once by 
the reader, under the first republic, at the Paris Town 
Hall, when Lafayette succeeded in having it removed. 
'^ We all have a right to live and be happy ! Your state 
was by common consent the maker of all private fort- 
unes, the only recognized reliable advertiser of private 
reputations and names ! We never had a share in your 
speculations, in your contracts ; we cannot marry off 
our daughters, having no dov/ry to bribe young men 
with ; we never could secure wealth and luxuries ! You, 
who, according to all literary evidence, are using the 
state's influence to become rich and happy by all and 
any means, you shall make room for us !" 

Thus ''the people" again invaded the Tuileries and 
the Palais Royal. 

''Furniture, vases, pictures, chandeliers, everything 
was smashed and thrown out of the windows. One man, 
with muddy shoes, sprang on the throne and waved a red 
flag. They then took the throne, dragged it through 
the streets, and made a bonfire with it. A bust of Louis 
Philippe was smashed to pieces. There was general mer- 
riment. The poor workmen threw themselves on silk 
and velvet cushions. They plundered the royal pantry 
and cellar, and everybody made preparations for staying 

139 



FRENCH POPULISM 

there. Masses of people had made it their home, espe- 
cially the girls of St. Lazare. There were thirteen hun- 
dred such girls detained at the old St. Lazare convent, 
used as a jail and hospital at the same time. They were 
called ^ Vesuviennes.' During the insurrection they had 
been liberated and brought to the Tuileries in order to 
play there such antics as no royal palace ever saw. . . . 
Only two weeks later did the provisional government 
clear up the Tuileries, where the lowest class of the 
Parisian populace had formally settled down. They had 
had there a great ball on the 26th of February, and the 
orgies had continued ever since. The ' Vesuviennes ' 
asked to be organized as a corps of ^fighting amazons.^ 
Oaussidiere, the Prefect of Paris, put a stop to these 
scenes. The mob threatened to burn the palace down 
unless a sum of money were paid ; but they succeeded 
in expelling them by force. The beautiful palace of the 
king at Neuilly and one of the Rothschild^s villas had in 
the meanwhile been burned down ; the mob was seeking 
revenge on those who had made most money." * 

The insurrection rages now everywhere, not against 
absolute monarchy, as in 1793 or in 1830, but against 
constitutional government, another form of paternal 
government. Since the state does not provide for all 
the worthless people in France, since it confines its 
favors to politicians and *^ rings," it must be destroy- 
ed. The usual Paris barbarities take place, although 
there are fifty-five thousand soldiers of the regular army 
in the city, commanded by Marshal Bugeaud, a war- 
rior of Algerian fame. The king does not wish to 
spill the people^s blood ; he has resigned, handing his 
abdication to Thiers, who for ten years has much 

* Menzel. Vol. V., pp. 201-208. 
140 



FRENCH POPULISM 

contributed to all this mischief by his glorification 
of the " G-reat Napoleon/' of the "people's virtues/' of 
the " Republic " and other such contradictory Prench 
"platforms." Thiers, a little busybody, born poor but 
a millionaire at his death, has asked for constitutional 
monarchy ; then after he had it, he opposed every 
measure of the government, brandishing in poor Louis 
Philippe's face Napoleon's "military glories." After 
the king had given him a leading place in the cabinet, 
he proved so arbitrary that parliament compelled him to 
resign. From that day he tried to upset the state by 
appealing to " the people." Now that " the people " is in 
power and will soon acclaim another Napoleon, he op- 
poses " the people " and its new favorite. The result 
will be that Napoleon III. will finally gag him for a 
number of years, till the German army lays siege to 
Paris, when Thiers will try to gather up the pieces of 
his country's government in Versailles. , 

General Lamoriciere proceeds to read the abdication 
document to "the people." But he is stopped by some 
republican leaders who are not satisfied with its form. 
" Go back ! The abdication must include all the Orleans 
dynasty !" As Lamoriciere turns his horse to go back, 
they fire at him, wound him, and kill his horse. His 
soldiers come to his rescue, but they are surrounded and 
take refuge in a large building called the "Chateau 
d'Eau," near the Palais Royal. They hold out for one 
hour till the people sets fire to the building and burns 
them alive. There were in it one hundred and eighty- 
three men of the Fourteenth Regiment. The king's 
son, the Duke of Orleans, his wife, and her two children, 
have gone to the parliament, where they are respectfully 
received ; but " the people " breaks- through the gates, 
demolishes the door, and the armed mob takes possession 

141 



FRENCH POPULISM 

of the hall. Lamartine tries to make a speech, but the 
armed mob pushes its way through, almost crushing the 
Duchess of Orleans against the wall. She becomes 
separated from the children; one of them — the little 
Count of Chartres — falls under the feet of the mob. 
Some members of parliament rush to her rescue, and 
with the utmost efforts succeed in saving her and the 
little Count of Paris by breaking through a back door. 
The other child is finally picked up from under the feet 
of the mob by an Alsatian named Lippmann, who saves 
him and returns him to his mother after she has left 
Paris. 

The eruption of the volcano, to which all France had 
contributed by its political stupidity and its moral deg- 
radation under the state's tutelary protection, has now 
taken place, and the torrent of glowing lava and mud 
is running through Paris. Amid all the disorder, con- 
fusion, and general anarchy stands one man, impractical, 
short-sighted, but high-minded and truly noble. This 
man is not a soldier like Lafayette, whom he equals in 
true patriotism ; he is a poet, a true poet with higher 
ideals than Napoleonic battle-fields, or Liberty, Equality, 
and Fraternity mottoes, and such other standards. He is 
not a Victor Hugo, not a gifted and eloquent humbug, 
but a man with a true heart, and truly noble instincts. 
This man is Lamartine. With boiling indignation in his 
heart, pale but undismayed by threats, pistols, or sabres, 
he has rushed to his country's rescue, and his clear voice, 
dominating the hurricane, now rings before the City Hall. 
They ask for his head, wave a red flag in his face, and 
his doom is decided by howling French '^fraternity.'' 
He, all alone, with sublime heroism, with no other ally 
but the great Cod who inspired his verses, with no other 
weapons but the fire which burns in his soul, feels no 

142 



FRENCH POPULISM 

fear — only contempt. There he stands on the bal- 
cony of the Paris City Hall, over the howling sea of 
brutes who clamor for his head, looking indignantly at 
them, with fire darting from his eye. Not a Victor 
Hugo, this man ! But a noble figure, the noblest per- 
haps in all this French history ; and with a thundering 
voice, in words which became immortal, he cried : " You 
scoundrels ! Your flag has never seen but parades on 
the Champ de Mars, and has been dyed only in the blood 
of your countrymen ! But the tricolor which you have 
torn down has carried the fame of the nation around 
the world !" 

The power of this man, who stands all alone, proves 
greater than the rage of the mob. They recoil amazed ; 
on him their power is gone, for he does not fear them ; 
his contempt of them has stopped their yells. They 
stand aghast, for they never saw such a man! "Does 
he not look like a leader of men, he, on that balcony ?" 
A few begin to applaud, and the whole mob breaks sud- 
denly into cheers. Not a Bonaparte, with thundering 
artillery blowing "the people" to atoms, but a greater 
man yet in this case ! The leader of the mob, Lagrange, 
who has been seen all day holding a naked sabre in his 
hand, having appointed himself " G-overnor of the City 
Hall," has to wait. The people will not act ; and he 
himself does not dare in this moment to ask again for 
the head of the poet. So Lamartine has conquered the 
City Hall, he alone ; the troops being unable to do it. 

What will French democracy do now ? As they do 
not dare to kill the popular poet, they must expel him. 
But how ? He has possession of the City Hall, where he 
organizes a provisional government. They cart there 
dead bodies of men and horses, which are piled under the 
windows, hoping that Lamartine, with his refined feel- 

143 



FRENCH POPULISM 

ings and habits, will have to depart, with all his asso- 
ciates, being unable to endure the stench. But this 
failed also. No human being, be he alive and armed, 
or be he dead and rotting, will keep Lamartine from 
fulfilling his duty to the end. The literary and fash- 
ionable carrion of Eugene Sue, George Sand, and others, 
has never affected his pure mind. He alone among 
the popular French writers, having refused to accept it 
as a literary ideal, now finds strength enough to be a 
true hero. 

On the 26th, Lamartine, who had persuaded Louis 
Blanc, one of the socialist leaders, to stand by him in the 
interest of all France, obtains leave for the royal family 
to depart unharmed. Louis Blanc is appointed by the 
provisional government Minister of Improvements. The 
palace of the Luxembourg is handed over to the work- 
ing-class, to hold there a congress in the hall of the 
House of Peers under the presidency of a workman, one 
Albert, who sits there in working-man's clothes, and who, 
with the help of his fellow-workmen, is going to abol- 
ish poverty and want by promulgating decrees. So the 
working-class, with full consent of the government, de- 
cide that national workshops {ateliers natio7iaux) shall 
be established in all France under the paternal state 
supervision. They can do what they please ; the na- 
tional workshops are opened, and on the first day twenty 
thousand workmen begin ^^ national manufacturing" at 
the expense of the paternal state. It is soon found out 
that work being easy and well paid, there are over one 
hundred thousand workmen to be given work. Has 
socialism not declared to the paternal state that '^ labor 
shall now be organized '^ ? And has not the paternal 
state acquiesced, opening its treasury wide ? Now my 
socialistic friends, what else did you want ? Was it not 

144 



FRENCH POPULISM 

all yon wished in order to transform this world into a 
socialistic paradise ? 

But what is the tronhle now ? The paternal state 
can certainly mannfacture furniture and boots, clothing 
and crockery by the ton and by thousands of tons, but 
can it compel people to buy them ? The state has given 
with a free hand, showing its best will, and has poured 
into the laps of the working-men all the capital they 
asked for, millions upon millions. But can the paternal 
state, by unanimous parliamentary vote and duly signed 
and countersigned decree, magically transform bad wares 
into good ones, make a shaky table stanch, and bad 
boots serviceable ? On the 30th of May, 1848, according 
to official government records, there are one hundred 
and fifteen thousand men at work in the national work- 
shops, each man receiving two francs a day, a fair pay 
for the time, considering Paris prices. And the total 
amount of cash expended by the national workshops 
reaches fourteen millions in a few weeks. Similar 
national workshops are established in other cities of 
France, notably in Lyons and Marseilles. In Lyons, 
when the measure is stopped, it is found that the work- 
shops have absorbed one million six hundred and fifty- 
two thousand francs, and that the value of the wares 
manufactured there during all that time reaches the 
wonderfully "grand total of thirty thousand francs."' 
The wares manufactured by paternal state authority and 
under its '^ official " supervision in these national work- 
shops are everywhere unsalable, useless, bad, and costly ! 
Such is the result obtained by our socialistic friends, 
not denied to this day by any French writer, and demon- 
strated by practical cash accounts.* 

* Bachelet and Dezobry. Ateliers Nationaux. 
K 145 



FRENCH POPULISM 

What is to be done ? Continne such a business ? 
Paternal government cannot do it, for even a French 
state cannot transform a pair of bad breeches into good 
ones ! With bankruptcy staring us all in the face, as 
sure as death, if we keep doing business on such terms, 
we have to stop now, demonstrating thus to the world, 
by an object-lesson too much forgotten to-day, what fools 
we have been ! 

But to this unavoidable result, Paris, the City of 
Light, objects, and its popular clubs decide otherwise, 
being resolved to overrule nature. One hundred thou- 
sand citizens hold a meeting on the square of the Bas- 
tille, where formerly the old monarchy's dungeon had 
stood. The place shall inspire the meeting by the evo- 
cation of the glorious remembrances of the past. The 
'^ people" deliberates, and in its wisdom it has solved 
the question : " War must be declared in order to de- 
liver Poland ; one thousand millions shall be distributed 
to the poor of Paris ; the money to be collected by a 
special tax on the rich.'' And this decree shall be 
handed to the National Assembly, being ^'the will of 
the people," by one hundred thousand armed citizens. 

Lamartine, always fearless and prompt, tried in vain to 
interfere. Popular imbecility too great, too vast, too 
ocean-like in the City of Light ! The provisional govern- 
ment has waited so long that its life hangs only by a 
thread. The hall of the assembly is stormed by an armed 
mob smashing the doors and surging into the building, 
a living stream of howling fanatics. The representatives 
of the people, being "traitors," shall be torn to pieces ! 
But at this moment drums are heard ; companies of 
soldiers appear, and " the people " begins to run away. 
The hall is cleared. Lamartine addresses Ledru Rollin, 
the radical leader. "The insurgents," says he, "are 

146 



FRENCH POPULISM 

misusing yonr name ! Show Prance that they lie, that 
you are not a traitor ! Pollow me and let us reoccupy 
the City Hall V Ledru Eollin follows on horseback, 
like Lamartine, and the City Hall is retaken ; some 
rebel leaders are arrested there. Barbes, Albert, and 
Huber are sentenced at once to transportation ; Blanqui, 
to seven years' imprisonment. Louis Blanc runs away. 

And on this very same day, after Lamartine has tri- 
umphed, cries and shouts are heard everywhere in Paris, 
''^Long live the Emperor !" for a Bonaparte has arrived 
from England, and the '^glorious ISTapoleonic legend" 
has been recalled in the memories of the people. When 
the elections take place in Paris on June 8th, he is 
elected to the assembly, where two of his cousins are 
already sitting ; but, preferring to await the result of 
the inevitable struggle between the provisional govern- 
ment and the mob, he returns for a while to England, 
stating ''that his name shall not be connected with civil 
war." 

The French paternal state remains in a most critical 
condition, confronted by the Paris mob — by one hundred 
thousand workmen of the national workshops, all armed 
and equipped for slaughter ; and as all workmen have 
flocked from the country to Paris, because they can there 
be kept at the expense of the state with no distinction 
of individual working efficiency, the number of the 
enemies of the paternal state increases daily at an om- 
inous rate. 

At last, after several days of uninterrupted battle and 
slaughter, the last barricade is stormed by General 
Courtiges, who leads the attack, and is wounded him- 
self. And thus ends another "glorious page" in Paris 
history — the immortal deed of French socialistic de- 
mocracy — to be repeated in almost similar manner, hut 

147 



FRENCH POPULISM 

on a greater scale yet, after the Franco-German war of 
1870. How many people were killed in 1848 nobody 
ever knew. The corpses were not counted. The esti- 
mates run from ten thousand to twelve thousand. 

All Europe, excepting England, is now ablaze and 
bleeding from civil war. Everywhere ^'^ paternal state" 
is reaping its reward. But see what is happening now 
in London, where a monster procession, organized by 
Irish demagogues, is going to present to the English 
parliament such a petition as England never saw ! Shall 
French methods invade London, too, and a howling mob 
dictate to an English parliament what '^the will of the 
people " has decided ? No ! Happily not, for England 
and also for the world ; for one hundred and fifty thou- 
sand English ^'gentlemen" have enrolled themselves as 
constables, and the mob, hearing of it, comes to the con- 
clusion that in a country where '^gentlemen" to the 
number of one hundred and fifty thousand will willingly . 
serve as constables, with no likelihood of their running 
away like French nobility, it will be safer and better to 
abstain from French methods of government. Thus 
England has peace in those troubled times, civil war 
raging everywhere on the Continent, where all the 
paternal states are tumbling into chaos and anarchic 
confusion. 

The spectacle presented by the continental nations of 
Europe after the restoration of the monarchy in France 
was another evidence of the disastrous results of state 
omnipotence. The history of those times, between 1815 
and 1848, is almost forgotten to-day. While England 
was building up its enormous colonial empire, while 
Anglo-Saxon America was erecting a gigantic political 
edifice in the wildernesses of the New World, conti- 
nental Europe was engaged in riots, conspiracies, diplo- 
ids 



FRENCH POPULISM 

matic intrigues, and civil wars. 'Not one of these con- 
tinental states enjoyed the blessings of durable peace. 
Blood was flowing in Spain, in Portugal, in Italy. Eevo- 
lutions broke out in Belgium, in Hungary, in Poland, in 
Switzerland, as well as in France, even before the great 
explosion of 1848, when military repression ceased even 
in Germany to maintain established authority. 

England, already in the time of Canning, was try- 
ing everywhere to stop the persecutions begun by the 
despotic governments of Germany, Russia, and France 
against the liberal movement ; but the unprincipled, 
•unscrupulous continental statesmen, the Russian Czar 
Nicholas, the German states, especially Austria, French 
politicians like Talleyrand and Thiers, and such con- 
temptible leaders as Metternich, had converted European 
populations into discontented, rebellious, revolutionary 
mobs, which German, French, and Russian bayonets 
could not succeed in keeping down. Thus a French 
army permanently occupied Rome in support of popery 
and absolute despotism. Germany enforced its military 
and brutal tyranny with the same object in view, and 
Germanic Austria flogged not only its soldiers, but even 
Italian women, in order to maintain the blessings of 
German '^ superiority " in poor, bleeding Italy. The 
horrors committed in Lombardy by these German des- 
pots — by the Austrian General Haynau, for instance, the 
German "butcher," whose mustaches were torn off by 
an enraged English mob when he happened to show him- 
self in London — have disappeared from our memories. 
Had the French court of 1830 higher standards of public 
decency than its predecessors ? A single fact, also for- 
gotten to-day, may throw some light on this question, 
for Charles X.'s daughter-in-law, the Duchess of Berry, 
who would have been Queen of France if her Jinsband, 

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FRENCH POPULISM 

the heir to the French crown, had not been assassinated 
by Louvel, gave birth to an illegitimate child in the 
castle of Blaye. She had returned to France after the 
revolution of 1830, in order to foment civil war in the 
Vendee, for she claimed the crown for her son, the 
Comte de Ohambord, the French pretender, who died 
a few years ago. Being discovered and arrested by the 
government of her cousin, Louis Philippe, she had been 
confined at Blaye ; and there her illegitimate child was 
born, the name of whose father she refused to reveal to 
the French government. Such a woman had presided 
at the court of Charles X., exceedingly popular, and 
esteemed by French nobility; and her son, the Comte 
de Chambord, or "Henry V.," as the French legitimists 
called him, might have ruled France after the Franco- 
German war, when the crown was tendered to him, if he 
had made a few concessions at that time to the liberals. 
But he insisted on abolishing the national tricolor flag 
and substituting for it the old royal standard of the 
French monarchy. This woman afterwards married 
ao-ain — an Italian count. Chateaubriand has called her 
a martyr and a saint. 

Nobody takes any interest to-day in this contemptible 
epoch of European history, for all these persecutions, 
these slaughters, these riots, these civil wars have re- 
sulted in vain attempts to stop the world's progress. 
Hardly a single measure enforced by these tutelary gov- 
ernments, by military coercion, by brutal repression, or 
diplomatic intrigue, has left a useful impression that 
might gratefully be remembered to-day. Austrian des- 
potism had finally to withdraw from Italy, and had to 
recognize Hungarian home-rule in the end. The French 
soldiers had to abandon Rome to the Italians, and stop 
meddling in Spanish affairs, as well as in Mexican affairs 

150 



FRENCH POPULISM 

later on. And during that time, in onr own century, 
Anglo-Saxon individual energy and enterprise gained 
control of the world. Compare the work accomplished 
by the paternal states of continental Europe between 
1815 and 1865, during fifty years of continental state 
despotism, with the work accomplished by the English- 
speaking communities ! 



CHAPTER VIII 

OLD GEKMANY 

"We saw Germanic princes in former times, sitting in 
solemn assemblies regulated by feudal law, in the great 
hall of some German city, acting as a kind of national 
committee presided over by a constitutional leader, the 
Germanic emperor, elected by the Germanic constitu- 
tional chieftains ; all acting as delegates, deputies heredi- 
tary or elective of all German freemen, who, as history 
tells us, were even called upon to ratify their leaders' 
decision. But in the end the Germanic emperor had 
no power, no authority, no resources; he was a mere 
figure-head ; all the German princes were independent 
petty monarchs, cut out on the pattern of Louis XIV., 
whom they tried to imitate. And the people lost all its 
rights. Like cattle pent up by a master, beaten and 
kicked into place, with even more servility than their 
Gallo-Erankish neighbors, who at last exploded in vol- 
canic fury, the German " subjects" submitted patiently. 
When a master, like Frederick the Great, lifted his cane 
and applied it over the shoulders of a '' German gentle- 
man," the latter meekly ducked his head.* In some 

* Frederick the Great always carried a cane, and, according to the 
German fashion, used to beat his subordinates, even his generals. 
The habit prevailing now — as we shall see later— of beating the re- 

153 



OLD GERMANY 

cases, as that of Frederick the Great, the man might 
console himself by the thought that the hand which 
struck him was the hand of an able master ; but when, 
as often happened under the two successors of Fred- 
erick the Great, for instance, the cane of German state 
paternalism was handled by a royal booby, a grand ducal 
knave, or a margravian rufl&an, then the German sub- 
ject had to apply for consolation — and he did it too 
— to the philosophical turn of mind which characterized 
him. How useful this philosophical turn of mind was 
to the comfort of the German subject, if not to his 
political development, is what we shall have occasion to 
notice here. 

For centuries, and until very recent times, our Ger- 
man subject never voted, never elected anybody ; the 
state attended to his welfare and his wants ; meetings 
were not allowed, and are permitted to-day only under 
state or police control. Nor did the public weal allow 
any freedom in printed utterances of any kind, in news- 
papers or books ; nor are they allowed to-day, as we shall 
see ; for the paternal state alone, with its agents, police- 
men, and judges, all selected and rewarded by it, can 
decide whether a new idea or a sharp criticism is detri- 
mental or not to the public welfare. The state alone is 
competent to decide what children should learn; it ap- 
points those who shall not only guide its destinies, but 
who shall mould into the paternal state form the brain 
of every man. To each member of this vast bureaucratic 
army the state afiQxes its label, and on each one stamps 
its trade -mark, till our German ^* subject" when he 
dies — unless he be an idiot — is lowered to his grave 



cruits in the German army, is a characteristic feature of German 
state despotism. 

153 



OLD GERMANY 

with state marks, state titles, and state crosses upon 
him. 

And just as a new kind of ^' honor" is established by 
the state — of which we shall see samples later on — a new 
kind of crime is invented — not the old crime of '^ high 
treason against majesty" alone, but one defined by a 
new statute unknown in other climes — *^^ insult against 
functionaries " — under which any German may to-day be 
deprived of his personal liberty should he criticise an 
agent of the state; for the *' honor" of the German 
officer or a German civil functionary is of a peculiar 
kind, intelligible to German minds alone. 

An example, taken at random among many modern 
instances, may serve here, before we examine the system 
in detail, to justify this last assertion. At Oarlsruhe, 
in 1896, one lieutenant Von Bruzewitz, wearing his uni- 
form, plunges several times his sword — the emblem of 
German imperial honor — in the breast of a defenceless 
citizen who is sitting with two ladies, his relatives, in a 
public restaurant. The German officer has never seen 
this man before in his life, but when he rubbed his elbow 
against the citizen's chair, the latter '^insulted his honor" 
by remonstrating with a few words. The defenceless 
citizen, wounded and bleeding on the ground, begs for 
life, but the cowardly brute plunges his sword again in 
his breast, and, putting it back in the scabbard, exclaims, 
with true German military pride: *'Now my honor is 
safe !" The matter comes before the courts ; the assas- 
sin has one excuse — " he wore his uniform, and was an 
officer." So, instead of being hanged, he gets off with 
a very mild sentence — three or four years' confinement 
under military control. Then the Emperor of Germany, 
who has signed the sentence, takes this occasion to lect- 
ure all German officers in relation to this case : " Ger- 

154 



OLD GERMANY 

man officers should use their swords only when their 
honor has been seriously offended/' And " honor'' be- 
comes thus in Germany, under the tuition of the pater- 
nal state, a jewel of indiscernible value, looking, on closer 
examination, very much like a worthless piece of highly 
colored German glass. 

It is perhaps unnecessary to say that, notwithstanding 
its persistent effort to impose false standards of honor, 
of manhood, of dignity, of human efficiency on the 
people, the paternal state has not succeeded in Germany 
any more than in France in destroying certain innate 
virtues. In Germany much of the good work of Luther 
has remained ; some qualities of the German middle and 
lower classes are proverbial ; they either are born in the 
old Germanic heart, or they are the result of Luther's 
teachings and his doctrine of individual responsibility 
to God and to one's conscience, not to a church and 
pope. In the scientific or philosophic domain the state 
did not interfere, having no interest in asserting its om- 
nipotence there ; nor was it to the state's advantage to 
interfere with the German conscience in Protestant Ger- 
many, when the state itself was in opposition to certain 
Catholic rulers. One may almost say that wherever the 
state's authority did not pervert the German mind, a 
healthy development took place in individual man. But 
wherever the German state, in the exercise of its assumed 
paternal functions, deemed it a duty to substitute its 
perverting official influence for the normal standards 
of the people, moral and political diseases ensued, and 
nowhere have such paternal functions been more ex- 
tended than in Germany. The growth of the disease 
was evidenced by the utter collapse of Prussia eight 
years after the death of her greatest ruler, when French 
republican superiority wrested from her the German 

155 



OLD GERMANY 

Rhine Provinces. It was evidenced by Prussia's politi- 
cal death in 1805, due to the incapacity of the paternal 
state, and by the growth of modern socialism — that re- 
action against German state despotism — with which the 
modern German state is engaged in a life - and - death 
struggle, losing more ground every year as the election 
returns show. Just as the French paternal state, not- 
withstanding its follies and crimes, never succeeded in 
eradicating from the people at large those private virtues 
which have saved France from complete annihilation — 
industry and thrift, for instance, and financial honesty 
— so has the state in Germany never been able, with all 
its past and present despotism, to destroy in the masses 
certain traditional qualities rightly considered abroad 
as highly commendable. In fact, these very virtues, de- 
veloped in French and German family homes in spite 
of state interference, in spite of the government, have 
been the only recuperating force. When the paternal 
state collapsed, as it did twice in Germany during the 
last hundred years, first before the French republic, then 
before Napoleon's imperial armies, or as it did in France 
after Waterloo and Sedan, the private virtues of the 
people, the individual patient fortitude and common- 
sense, so much despised by the paternal state when it 
sat in all its glory high above the people, became the 
only known forces to redeem the national independence 
and put the paternal state again on its legs. 

It is doubtful whether any leading class in Europe 
ever reached a lower step of degradation than the German 
nobility and the German political rulers in the eighteenth 
century ; and it is doubtful also whether any nation of 
Caucasian race ever showed a more servile attitude tow- 
ards its upper class than the German people showed tow- 
ards the petty Neros, Caligulas, and the Louis Fifteenths 

156 



OLD GERMANY 

who governed Germany during all that century ; for 
German aristocracy was not only ridiculous, extravagant, 
and stupid, like its Versailles prototype, but it was, be- 
sides, inhuman and cruel, which French aristocracy never 
was. We here relinquish the pen to a truthful and con- 
scientious German historian. Unable to quote all au- 
thorities, we find in MenzeFs History of the Last One 
Hundred and Ttuenty Years a fairly concise and un- 
prejudiced account, which fully agrees with all other 
German descriptions of those times ; 

'"^The German princes, even those of the clergy, had 
already copied the example of Louis XV. They were 
extravagant in their pomp, had built everywhere new 
residences and palaces, new opera-houses and theatres ; 
they kept many mistresses, had surrounded themselves 
with a corrupt nobility, and they wasted the revenues of 
the country, the hard-earned product of their subjects' 
labor. Courts and noblemen read only French novels, 
and they had imported Parisian depravity and Parisian 
cynicism. This poison had also invaded the Berlin 
court after the death of Frederick the Great. . . . The 
nephew and successor of the latter, Frederick William, 
did not resemble his uncle in the least ; he had more 
flesh than mind. Nothing characterizes him better than 
the fact reported by Segur, the French ambassador, who 
says that in 1778, at the time when his uncle was fight- 
ing against Austria, he borrowed from the latter one 
million thalers to be able to defray his excesses. Al- 
ready as a prince he had been wedded twice, once to 
Elizabeth of Brunswick, from whom he was divorced, 
then to the Princess Louise of Hesse-Darmstadt, whom 
he neglected because she was too virtuous. His society 
was formed by his mistresses and people of low educa- 
tion. When he succeeded Frederick the Great, under 

157 



OLD GERMANY 

the name of King Frederick William II., he found sev- 
enty millions of thalers in the treasury and an excellent 
army of two hundred thousand men. But, instead of 
imitating his uncle's economy, he acted like those fool- 
ish sons of rich fathers who are alwa5^s in haste to divide 
their estate among their female and their male friends. 
. . . Among the women who influenced most of his 
actions was, in the first place, Wilhelmina Encke, the 
daughter of a cornet-player, a handsome blonde of very 
low instincts, who was the wife of his steward Rietz. 
She became the Prussian Pompadour and received the 
title of Countess of Lichtenau. She resembled also the 
Pompadour in retaining her influence to the death of the 
king. Like Louis XV., he made her sit with the queen 
at court, so overdressed and laden with jewels that she 
eclipsed the latter. His second mistress was a Countess 
Voss, of very high nobility. She was made a Countess 
of Ingenheim, but, according to Segur, it was not she, 
but his third mistress, the Countess Donhof, who suc- 
ceeded in being married ' on the left hand ' to him. So 
that, besides the queen, the king had another wife mar- 
ried to him by the church ; then he had his official 
mistress, the Lichtenau, without counting all his other 
female favorites — the actress Schulski, for instance, for 
whom, like a Louis XV., he gave feasts in his park at 
Potsdam. Among the companions of pleasure of the 
king. General Bischoffswerder had the foremost posi- 
tion. As he had neither merit nor capacity whatever, 
he would have played only a secondary role as a mere 
broker for women, if he had not contrived to control the 
king at the same time by his claims to be a 'magician.' 
On the recommendation of such people, the King of 
Prussia gave patents of nobility, crosses, sums of money, 
estates by wholesale, to the most unworthy people in the 

158 



OLD GERMANY 

country. It was sometimes enough to apply to a foot- 
man or a maid of the woman Rietz to be made a knight, 
and receive an estate with the title. This nobility, 
which counted in its ranks twenty-three new dynasties 
of counts, was sarcastically called the ^Eighty-six.' The 
corruption of the court had infected all the nobility, 
and especially the officers. The officers of the Guard 
of Berlin acquired in this respect the worst reputation. 
Mistresses openly kept, seductions, adulteries, gambling 
for high stakes, debts, drink, contempt of all domestic 
virtues and good habits, were alone fashionable. So 
that there was not much difference between the Berlin 
court of Frederick William II. and the French court 
of Louis XV.'' 

This Prussian ruler was the grandfather of the late 
Emperor William, a fact which shows how ^^ uneven'^ 
the qualities of the Hohenzollern family, the incarnate 
representative of state paternalism, appear in history. 

At that time the Bavarian court received subsidies 
from France, having been bought off by Versailles. 
Hanover had been bribed by England. All the German 
states were ruled, as Menzel says, " by parasites who had 
sprung out of the old decayed trunk of the Holy Roman 
Empire.'' 

Commenting upon the degradation reached in Germany 
at that time, another well-known German historian ex- 
presses himself as follows : 

'^ The civilization of the eighteenth century resembled 
very much that of the previous century. In all the upper 
circles the French language and French manners gave the 
tone. French adventurers of low extraction, of no char- 
acter or merit, were preferred for all important administra- 
tive or courtly offices to able Germans. In all the smaller 
courts superfluity of offices was the rule. Every petty 

159 



OLD GERMANY 

state sovereignty asserted itself by external pomp. All 
tlie German princes copied, without sense or conscience, 
the buildings, festivities, and parks of Versailles. The 
French method of allowing mistresses to rule the land 
was established in Dresden, in Warsaw, in Heidelberg, 
in Stuttgart, in Anspach, almost in every state of Ger- 
many. The Eussian favoritism at St. Petersburg was 
not more extravagant nor shameful." * 

'^The people," says Menzel, "was everywhere pre- 
serving, in its passiveness and humility, many virtues 
inherited from their ancestors ; but the upper and edu- 
cated classes of Germany had lost all those virtues. If 
the historian is compelled to record the worthlessness of 
the German princes and of the German nobility, he must 
also point out that the millions who were so badly gov- 
erned, and on whom the state was trying to impose the 
depraved and foolish standards of foreign schools and 
literature, had nevertheless preserved the old religious 
faith, the old industry, and the old fidelity. Generally 
speaking, Paris was the sun, during all the eighteenth 
century, around which the petty courts and the nobility 
of Germany revolved. They looked to that sun for all 
life and light. To have gone at least once to Paris was 
indispensable to any one who pretended to be fashion- 
able; but at home also everything was French, even the 
language. They had French maids for their children, 
French governesses and teachers, French fencing and 
dancing masters. They wore only French dresses, and 
they sent to Paris and Lyons enormous sums extorted 
from the people to pay for all kinds of articles of fashion. 
They had only French cooks and French hair-dressers. 

* Becker. WeltgescMchte, neu bearbeitet wn WiVfielm Muller. 
Stuttgart, 1886, Vol. VII., p. 295. 

160 



OLD GERMANY 

No court could get along without its Italian opera and 
its French ballet, with pretty Italian or French girls, 
who were generally the mistresses of the princes, of the 
courtiers, and of the noblemen." 

It never yet has struck our worthy German professors, 
who seldom tire of reproaching France for her corrupt- 
ing influence, that German innate servility and apathetic 
submissiveness to their state were the prime causes of 
this abject degradation. When the paternal state in 
Prussia, for instance, is represented by a Frederick the 
Great, our Prussians do wonders ; when represented by 
his two successors, political stupidity and demoraliza- 
tion are supreme. We are beaten by the raw recruits 
of republican France. Our Prussian officers surrender 
forts and provinces with unparalleled knavery, without 
the faintest conception of what the word '''duty" 
means. Breslau, Erfurt, Stettin, Spandau, and other 
strong places surrender to French generals who lack 
artillery to make a siege. They surrender even, as we 
shall see, to French cavalry — a most remarkable event 
in any country^s war annals — for the paternal state is 
everything in Germany, and after it crumbles down by 
its own folly, being so top-heavy, who can build it up 
again, if there are only subjects, and no citizens, in 
the land ? In fact, whether France conquers or not, 
whether she can reduce all Germany to poverty and 
slavery, or whether she is stopped in her mad career, 
depends entirely on our paternal state. Under a Fred- 
erick the Great or a Moltke, with the French paternal 
state governed by inferior men, Germany can exist ; 
under others. Frenchmen being led by a Dumouriez, a 
Pichegru, a Hoche, or a Bonaparte, the stream of politi- 
cal prosperity runs quite the other way ; and with so 
much rapidity sometimes, as in 1806, that German geog- 
L 161 



OLD GERMANY 

raphy ceased for some years to be a possible science, de- 
pending, as it did, merely on tbe caprices of one man in 
Paris, so that at certain times even tlie omniscient Prus- 
sian state does not know what its next boundary will be, 
and not one German in ten can tell whose subject he 
will be next year. 

Just as the Catholic Church and its popes decide for 
mankind what is useful or detrimental to spiritual wel- 
fare, so the German state and its bureaucracy decide 
what is necessary to their subjects' temporal redemption. 

To what degradation political apathy and political 
worthlessness will lead a country, can be seen by the 
following glimpses at the results of German education — 
the famous German Bildung of which one hears so much 
— at the end of the last century. We shall see later 
what they are to-day. 

In Saxony the Prince Elector had turned Catholic to 
become King of Poland. '^'He copied Louis XIY.," 
says our German historian, *'' ordering extravagant build- 
ings and festivities, and inflicting on the nation all the 
evils resulting from the government of mistresses. He 
expended fabulous sums and oppressed poor loyal Saxony 
to the utmost. His son was more sober, but since 1746 
he had handed over the government to Count Brtihl, his 
favorite, whose name has remained attached to the 
*^ Dresden Terrace.' The latter was a courtier, who 
lived more extravagantly than even his master, and 
who, in order to raise money for his follies, exhausted 
all the resources of the country, drained all the state 
treasuries, even the treasury of the state orphan asylums, 
and imposed forced loans. Bruhl ordered all his ward- 
robe — hundreds of suits and wigs — and even dishes, from 
Paris, following in everything the tastes of Augustus II., 
who accepted no other standard but Versailles. This 

162 



OLD GERMANY 

taste descended unhappily to the burgher class through 
the courtiers and poets. Professor Gottsched, who, as 
a literary man, a critic, and a playwright, then imposed 
rules on all Germany, allowed no other taste but French 
taste ; he destroyed the national popular stage, had the 
national Punch {Hansiuurst) solemnly burned in effigy, 
and allowed only classical French pieces. . . . The light 
and lascivious French novels had permeated from court 
and nobility through all the middle-class. Everybody in 
Leipsic prided himself on behaving as lightly, as grace- 
fully, as courteously as in Paris ; the German maids of 
Leipsic became perfect French grisettes. The moral deg- 
radation of Leipsic, in the middle of the last century, 
can be seen in the contemporary publications in that 
city, all full of scandals and gossip ; or in the poems of 
Corvinus, Celander, Henrici, Von Bohlau, Rost, Wiesse, 
and others."* 

In Bavaria, the country had been governed in the 
most shameful manner, first under Max Emmanuel, 
then under Charles Albert. At the latter's death, in 
1746, his son. Max Joseph, succeeded as ruler ; he was 
weak-minded, and allowed the Jesuits to govern as they 
pleased. Thanks to paternal misrule, the people had 
become so miserably jpoor that a peasant, one Thierriegel, 
led an emigration of ten thousand Bavarians to Spain in 
1746, to whom the Spanish Count Olavides gave waste 
lands in the Sierra Morena. 

In 1790 Charles Theodore, ruler of Bavaria, ordered 
the city council of Munich to kneel before his portrait 
and beg pardon in that attitude for having advised the 
citizens not to present an address of thanks to the 
prince, alleging that they alone should do it. Another 

* Menzel. History of the Last One Hundred and Twenty Years. 

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OLD GERMANY 

of that same family. Prince Charles, who was educated 
by the French Abbe Jalabert, and reigned in the princi- 
pality of Rhenish Bavaria, reminds one of Nero. He 
bit off the finger of a lady of the court one day, because 
he hated her. Another day, as his cook had failed in 
the preparation of a dish, he had him brought before 
him, ordered the servants to undress him, made him 
stand naked, and then had alcohol poured on him and 
ignited. They managed to save the poor man^s life, but 
he became insane. He did the same thing to his secre- 
tary, whose life they managed to save by burying him in 
a pile of manure. He built a palace in imitation of 
Versailles, which cost fourteen millions of florins, and he 
compelled every German who passed by to take off his 
hat and salute his residence. He lived there with the 
wife of his leading adviser, a woman named Von Eisen- 
beck, his Pompadour, and converted all the country into 
a game preserve. He had six hundred dogs ; with them 
and his hunters he hunted up all the pretty girls of the 
country, and kept them for two weeks as night compan- 
ions for himself and his hunters. This monster died at 
last in 1795 ; not expelled by German subjects, but ex- 
pelled by a French army of the republic. 

In 1776 "Landgraf^^ Frederick II., ruler of Hesse, 
sold twelve thousand of his male subjects to England 
to fight against the American colonies. The English 
agents bought the people in the market, like cattle, at 
the rate of one hundred thalers apiece (seventy-five dol- 
lars). Then he sold again a herd of twelve thousand, and 
later on another herd of ten thousand more ; the whole 
country had only four hundred thousand inhabitants. 
Whoever made any trouble was tied up and beaten with 
clubs till he submitted. If the father and mother com- 
plained, the father was put in irons and the wife sen- 

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OLD GERMANY 

tenced to hard labor. Among these white slaves was 
Seume, celebrated afterwards as a writer, who sa3^s in 
the history of his life: '^Nobody was safe from this 
trader in souls. . . . They tore off my academical certi- 
ficate to prevent anybody identifying me.'''' He had to 
fight against the United States, he who was an advanced 
liberal all his life. The next prince, A\^illiam IX., con- 
tinued this trade ; the last four thousand subjects were 
sold to go to the English colonies. 

At Darmstadt, Louis IX. ascended the throne of his 
father in 1768, and moved his residence to Pirmasens, a 
town in the hills across the Rhine; there he ^^ played 
soldier " against all rules of common-sense, with the ut- 
most inhumanity and cruelty — like most German rulers 
of these times. In that town, which he surrounded with 
walls, he gathered all the tallest men he could find in 
Germany ; there were nine thousand male inhabitants, of 
whom six thousand eight hundred and fifty were soldiers; 
and he converted the town into a human stud-farm in 
order to have cbidren who should be tall like their fa- 
thers. There was a soldier for every inhabitant's daugh- 
ter, but they were allowed to marry if they chose. All 
had to remain there for life. He drilled the soldiers every 
day in a hall large enough for his whole army; he heated 
it in winter with twenty-two stoves. The new variety of 
human beings which he tried to create has degenerated 
since, but the popular expression has remained among 
the peasants of the Rhenish Palatinate : '^ There goes a 
Pirmasens girl," whenever they see a tall girl. 

In Wtirtemberg matters were worse yet. There a 
young ruffian — a pupil of Frederick the Great, however — 
occupied the throne from 1744 till he became an old 
man in 1793. He began to reign at the age of seven- 
teen, and with his friends, among whom was a Count 

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OLD GERMANY 

Pappenheim, he persecuted all yonng girls, and became 
the terror of the land. During a ball he committed a 
rape on the danghter of one Vollstaedt, a court council- 
lor ; he shut up once a whole company of ladies all night 
in the palace, where they had been invited to a party. 
During the Seven Years' War he declared against his 
benefactor, Frederick the Great, but ran away at Fulda. 
He maltreated the soldiers in his dukedom, but he issued 
a decree that every subject should take off his hat when 
passing near one. The privy councillor Stralin, of Stutt- 
gart, once forgot to do so before a sentry, and he re- 
ceived twenty-five lashes. He kept a large harem, sent 
for Vestris, the dancer, from Paris ; he had great hunts 
at his celebrated country residence, " Solitude,^^ where 
he kept a second harem composed of pretty country 
girls, whom his hunters had orders to bring to him for 
inspection, whenever they saw one. 

In Brunswick, Duke Karl, who reigned since 1735, 
and who had married a sister of Frederick the Great, 
led such an extravagant life, keeping an opera, ballet 
girls, etc., that, in order to raise funds, he sold his sub- 
jects to England. His successor, Ferdinand, also sold 
four thousand of them, having not money enough for 
all his women. 

All these facts are recorded by German historians 
themselves, and no German professor has ever denied 
one of them ; on the contrary, they are to be found in 
all German works where details are given in relation to 
the last century's German civilization. 

'' But the greatest shame of Germany, '^ says one of 
them already quoted above, " was the conduct of the 
princes who were dignitaries of the Catholic Church ; 
for all the French corruption had invaded the clergy. 
The archbishops and bishops had built great castles and 

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OLD GERMANY 

palaces ; thej kept a court with mistresses, operas, bal- 
lets, and hunts, just the same as the temporal rulers. 
At Mainz, the archbishop, Joseph von Erthal, had sixty 
chamberlains and twelve generals, and he went about 
always surrounded by his women, to whom he had given 
classical names : Aspasia, Lais, Phryne, Danae, Krat- 
nia, etc. In Cologne, the archbishop, having no more 
money, although he had taken everything away from the 
people, surrendered himself to a Jew, one Baruch, and 
he issued bad coin and debased the currency. In Trier 
the prince-bishop, in Salzburg the archbishop, in Pas- 
sau the bishop, followed the general rule. Even the 
convents of the nuns had large wine-cellars.^'' 

We stop looking further into these records. Such 
was the condition of Germany, and the facts nobody 
denies. Evidently Germany had reached a lower de- 
gree of degradation than France, for this degradation 
had a character of brutality and cruelty unknown at 
Versailles; and, what is worse yet, the German nation 
remained perfectly indifferent and passive before the 
vilest methods of government which Europe ever saw. 

'^ The corruption came from France. '' This is the 
excuse given by all German professors. A paltry excuse 
for learned professors, who extol, at all times, German 
honor, German self-respect, German dignity, German 
state methods, and that famous German Bildungj or 
training, of which we hear so much. The point to 
which German Bildung led the German nation is, hap- 
pily for the world, one that no barbarous — ungebildet- — 
American or Briton cares to reach. 

The phenomenon of German degradation explains it- 
self to ^^ barbarous" Anglo-Saxons, so despised to this 
day in '^cultured" German official circles; but the ex- 
planation is quite different from that laid down by 

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OLD GERMANY 

learned German professors. The German nation had 
reached such an abject condition, because for centuries 
it had lost all sense of freedom and political dignity. 
At all times and to this day the German state, with its 
complicated erudition, has never educated gentlemen, 
only functionaries of all kinds. Its object is not to 
make a man, but an of&cer, a soldier, a German man- 
darin, or a politically worthless subject. The reader 
can form an opinion of the present state methods 
employed to maintain German militarism, as revealed 
by many recent court trials, in the following chapter, 
where he will have to wade through details of mili- 
tary education hardly more edifying, considering the 
times, than the German civilization of the eighteenth 
century. Germany had fallen so low because the pa- 
ternal German state had always substituted, as it does 
to-day, false standards of dignity and honor for true 
ones. These false standards, acting like an anaesthetic 
drug on a subject's moral feelings, make him indiffer- 
ent to all the indignities, the insults, heaped upon his 
head by his superior, and indifferent to the indignities 
that he himself heaps upon the head of his inferior. 
With its state titles and decorations, state dignities, and 
state candlesticks d la Louis XIV., its state courts of 
honor obliging a man to fight a duel, and other state 
courts forbidding him to fight one ; with its state edu- 
cation depriving a man of any other ideal in life but a 
military uniform, a bureaucratic post, a patent of nobil- 
ity, a decoration, or a pension, or the right to be called 
"Excellency" — with all these features the German pa- 
ternal state as a moral educator or civilizing agent is a 
signal failure. All the present vices and ills of modern 
Germany are traceable to the despotism of its civil pope- 
ry. None of the fine qualities and domestic virtues of 

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its middle and lower classes emanate from it. They 
exist in spite of it, and were not acquired in barracks, 
nor by state examinations and state drill, nor by state 
prosecution of every heretic opinion. 

The facts speak for themselves. When Frederick the 
Great died Prussia was the strongest military power of 
the European continent. Its treasury was full ; its civil 
organization and administration were perfect, at least 
according to German standards. No machinery of state 
was ever in better working order ; never were its pieces 
more carefully selected, more fitting, more sound. Its 
performance was so well calculated that it may be said, 
without exaggeration, never to have been equalled. And, 
in spite of this, what were the immediate results ? Let 
us look at this most instructive period of German his- 
tory. 

At their first contact with the badly drilled, untrained, 
but fanatic soldiers of the French Republic at Valmy, at 
Jemmapes, at Fleurus, at Wattignies, and other places, 
the German leaders appear to be incompetent. The 
highly disciplined German troops, fresh from the Seven 
Years'* War, are beaten and repulsed. And this inferior- 
ity lasts as long as the German nation allows its leaders 
to follow their traditional policy — to the day when the 
nation, aroused at last from its passiveness and apathy 
by the suffering it endures, with new leaders like Stein, 
BlUcher, Gneisenau, York, and other able men, be they 
soldiers, be they poets, at last rescues Germany from 
foreign rule and oppression. Here three characteristic 
facts appear. In the first place, Germany is already de- 
feated, and compelled to abandon part of its territory 
by the treaty of Basel before Bonaparte has taken a hand 
in the struggle. Eight years have hardly elapsed since 
Frederick the Great closed his eyes, and Prussia's ag- 

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OLD GERMANY 

gression, all Germany^s aggression, has ended in disaster. 
The German armies are driven not only from French 
soil, but from Belgium and Holland, even from the left 
bank of the Rhine, which remains in French hands for 
almost twenty years. The weakness of the Prussian and 
German state methods is thus already demonstrated be- 
fore Napoleon's appearance, for these methods had a 
practical value only on the express condition that they 
be applied by an extraordinary genius, by a Frederick 
the Great. The methods of German state paternalism — 
bureaucratic efficiency, military drill, and state omnipo- 
tence — have all remained intact ; but, like tools in the 
hands of an incompetent artisan, they produce now more 
harm than good, for the competent mechanic who alone 
could use them has departed forever. 

Then, in the second place, when the paternal state 
collapses, its ruin is so complete — hardly one Prussian 
functionary in ten having manhood and sense enough to 
perform his duty — that when Jena comes, Prussia, the 
most perfect state machine on earth, literally falls to 
pieces. The paternal king and his bureaucracy lie pros- 
trate, helpless, in the most humiliating attitude before 
the Corsican despot. That haughty pride, so character- 
istic of Prussian state officers and dignitaries, is all gone ; 
these very men so brutal and rude towards their own 
people, so much so that a dignitary never addresses a 
subject except by using the third person — he instead 
of you — now stand, or rather lie, abjectly before their 
French masters, who treat them with the utmost con- 
tempt, not much better than Prussian subjects. 

Finally, w^hen after years of misery, hunger, and disas- 
ters, the German nation emerges at last from its tradi- 
tional lethargy, none of the men who were at the helm 
before the national ruin are of any service whatever. 

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OLD GERMANY 

On the contrary, their lack of manhood, of dignity, and 
energy continually handicaps the national outbreak. 
They never believed in the people. The King of Saxony 
hid himself in the cellars of his pulace during the battle 
of Leipsic, and thought the defeat of the French in- 
credible. Most of the rulers, like him, have no faith in 
German rebellion ; but they plead meekly in Paris for 
themselves and their dynastic interests — the King of 
Prussia with the others. 

These different facts show conclusively the impotence 
of ''"omnipotent" state, and the worthlessness of *' offi- 
cial Germany " in a crisis when the pilot at the helm, 
the one man who steers the whole machine, does not 
happen to be an extraordinary genius. The same tools 
used by a Frederick the Great or a Bismarck fail when 
handled by ordinary men ; just as military France col- 
lapses under N^apoleon III., after having conquered all 
Europe under Napoleon I. 

During the winter of 1805-1806 alone, if official 
records are correct, five thousand seven hundred and 
twelve Prussian soldiers deserted from the ranks, not- 
withstanding stern discipline and regulations. Hardly 
twenty years had elapsed since the death of Frederick 
the Great, in 1786, and the Prussian system, which was 
then already a century old, had not been disturbed by 
internal dissensions or '^ unforeseen accidents." No 
country apparently had more order, more safeguards 
against disasters of all kinds ; the state, with its piercing 
eye, its complete and perfect bureaucracy, its untiring- 
vigilance, prying into every man's house, from the court 
councillor's to the humble peasant's, in order to correct, 
to improve, to consolidate, to teach, to compel, or even 
to recreate mankind ; prying into every man's concerns 
in order to prevent danger, to avert evils, to redress and 

171 



OLD GERMANY 

straighten up everything — even the backbone of its sub- 
jects, the drill sergeant teaching them how to walk ac- 
cording to standard. 

At Jena, before the battle has begun, when ISTapo- 
leon contemplates the position of the Prussian army 
and sees how easily he can outgeneral their leaders — 
"The Prussians,^'' says he, "are still more stupid than 
the Austrians^'; not a flattering remark, coming from 
such a good judge of men, on the most perfectly drilled 
and trained nation of Europe. They have allowed him 
during the night to make a road, to cut trees, to drag 
artillery to the top of a steep hill — the Landgrafenberg 
— and when the day begins, the issue of the battle is a 
foregone conclusion for all except the Prussian staff and 
commanders. Ten thousand Prussians and Saxons 
killed and eighteen thousand prisoners are the result; 
but the retreat is even worse than the battle. The old 
Marshal von Mollendorf, a general of Frederick the 
Great, who once won a victory over the French at 
Kaiserslautern, becomes frightened out of his wits, and 
surrenders one hundred and twenty guns and four thou- 
sand men without firing a shot ; to the great indignation 
of a gallant young lieutenant, one Hellwitz, who with 
fifty cavalrymen breaks through the French troops, sets 
free four thousand Prussian prisoners, scatters their 
escort of five hundred French soldiers, and escapes with 
his men. The next day Bernadotte surprises the Duke 
of Wlirtemberg, kills two thousand five hundred Ger- 
man soldiers, makes five thousand prisoners, and takes 
twenty-two guns. 

The King of Prussia, the military and bureaucratic 
pope of the most military and bureaucratic state of the 
European continent, is now running fast, first to Berlin ; 
then, as the French still advance, to the east of Berlin, 

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OLD GERMANY 

then farther and farther east. History has never seen 
a more complete wreck of a state, of its power, and en- 
ergy ; and the state being wrecked in this one day^s 
struggle, the nation is now lost. The ship of state has 
foundered with all on board, being an inelastic, heavy, 
unyielding hulk of iron to which one single blow is an 
irreparable disaster. How different from a buoyant craft 
like the old Roman commonwealth, whose senate could 
serenely thank a defeated general for having " not de- 
spaired of the republic"! 

The French advance rapidly ; and before them all the 
strongly fortified towns surrender, most of them without 
firing a shot. '^ To the sad spectacle of wholesale sur- 
renders in the open field," says our German historian, 
*' succeeded a sadder one yet : the cowardly surrender 
of almost all tlie Prussian fortresses." * 

Let us observe here another characteristic fact. All 
these Prussian strongholds have been equipped by the 
paternal state in the most admirable manner ; for the 
Prussian government is never caught, like some of its 
neighbors, neglecting its paternal duties. The Prussian 
state is always vigilant, omniscient, and ubiquitous in 
its solicitude ; so that it has provided these many for- 
tresses with every conceivable resource. Competent state 
functionaries have made excellent walls and deep ditches 
at the very place where they should be ; plenty of mag- 
nificent guns are at hand — a manufactured article in 
which to this day the Prussian state shows its wonderful 
superiority — with all necessary ammunition ; there is 
always plenty of food for garrison^, and plenty of strong, 
healthy, well-trained soldiers who can move like clock- 
work; all the officers belong to the military ''^ Yunker'^ 

* Menzel. Vol. IH. 
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OLD GERMANY 

class, having been selected from a caste which passes at 
all times as the strongest support of the state. The tu- 
telary Prussian state has provided all these things ; only 
one thing has been forgotten, which is the most import- 
ant of all : to have real men, not mere Prussian state 
functionaries, clothed in those Prussian uniforms. Per- 
sonally, they may have courage enough to protect what 
Prussia calls their honor, by fighting a duel ; but their 
dignity and manhood do not go further, and they do 
not feel at all under the necessity of standing like 
heroes before French bayonets. To save Prussia is the 
state's business; superior authority, not a subordinate 
commander, must fight Napoleon. Eight for the na- 
tion? "My dear sir, there is no Prussian nation, only 
a Prussian state intrusted by Grod with the necessary 
authority to regulate every subject's thoughts and acts, 
and so wise that it knows better than anybody else what 
should be done in this case." 

This doctrine will have to be somewhat changed in 
Prussia during this century, for the people, having at 
last become tired of being governed by paternal broom- 
stick, makes open revolt in 1848; and it is only after 
Prussia stops looking with contempt on the national 
wishes and aims of the German fatherland that Bis- 
marck and Moltke can lead its king to Versailles, there 
to be crowned German Emperor. 

But so far there is no sign that a German nation ex- 
ists, and the Prussian state has suddenly collapsed, like 
the Austrian, the Bavarian, the Saxon, and all the other 
states. Prussian majesty, a rather weak, undecided, in- 
capable king, retreats all the time, with his queen in 
tears, keeping always at a safe distance from the French 
tide, till he reaches the farthest end of his realm, where 
he hopes to be rescued from annihilation by his imperial 

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OLD GERMANY 

brother, the Czar, and a Russian army. After Erfnrt, 
Berlin, and Spandan have opened their gates, Stettin 
falls, shamefully surrendered by General von Romberg ; 
then Kiistrin, all surrounded by water and marshes, al- 
most impregnable, except for the fact that one Prussian 
general. Von Ingersleben, is in command. He is the man 
who surrenders to a body of French cavalry — an almost 
incredible performance, as we have already remarked, 
were it not mentioned with patriotic indignation by 
German historians, and also proved by the records. A 
few days before this surrender, Prussian majesty visited 
this noble commander and recommended him to hold the 
place. Old Kleist surrenders Magdeburg with twenty- 
two thousand soldiers, although the place is one of the 
strongest and best-equipped in the kingdom. He sur- 
renders to Ney, who has only ten thousand men and not 
a single siege gun. '"^This," says Menzel, *Mvas the 
most shameful surrender, and everywhere the officers 
stipulated as a condition that they should go free on 
parole, and should have the privilege of removing their 
baggage ; otherwise not one of them ever objected to a 
surrender.'' Which latter remark of the German histo- 
rian seems rather superfluous, for, according to German 
state gospel, " Obedience is the first duty of the German 
subject'' — a precept admitted to this day. 

Hameln, Plassenburg, Nienburg fall almost without a 
struggle ; then Glogau, although the French have again 
no siege guns ; but the Prussian commander there has 
safely preserved for the enemy all his heavy guns, so that 
now, when they need some, they will use these Prussian 
cannon, so remarkably well made by the government. 
The French general Vandamme plunders all the country, 
both he and his men stealing silverware; and, strange 
to say, according to German authorities, the greatest 

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OLD GERMANY 

plunderers are German soldiers serving in the French 
army, some regiments raised on the Rhine by Napoleon, 
and the Wtirtembergers, more especially the corps called 
*' Black Jagers/' *' Never," says Menzel, ^^had the 
German been more brutal to Germans, except during 
our wars of religion, and never did France find in Ger- 
many better tools to dishonor the country." 

Vandamme appears now before Breslau with the Prus- 
sian guns he has taken in Glogau. *^Here General von 
Thiele is in command, and with him is the inspector- 
general of all the fortresses of Silesia, one Lindner. 
During the first days the citizens had taken up arms, 
but their weapons were removed by the authorities for 
fear they might defend Breslau." The commanders sur- 
render, but at last, to the great scandal of the paternal 
Prussian state and to the eternal glory of German men, . 
*^the soldiers were furious, refused obedience, and in- 
sulted the officers." Here, at last, obedience to superior 
authority ceases to be the prime virtue of German 
hearts I — a sad phenomenon, according to Prussian state 
standards, but the first refreshing manifestation of Ger- 
man dignity, so far, in this ignoble Prussian epic. The 
French find here two hundred and fifty guns — a fact 
which speaks well again for Prussian tutelary vigilance. 
They impose on the city a war contribution of eighteen 
millions of francs — about twelve millions of dollars in 
American money, if we calculate the greater value of 
coin at that time. Vandamme then takes the two for- 
tresses of Brieg and Schweidnitz. *^The commanding 
officer there," says our German historian, ^' was the 
most brutal and stupid officer of the Prussian army — 
a man who used to beat the soldiers shockingly, who 
had neither intelligence nor honor, and who, after only 
three days of siege, surrendered with two hundred and 

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OLD GERMANY 

forty-nine guns, two thousand men, and an immense 
stock of war material. He had asked favorable condi- 
tions only for himself and all his officers/' 

The best-organized state of Europe is thus completely 
conquered in less than four months — a fact hardly paral- 
leled by that less shameful defeat when a similar military 
and bureaucratic government breaks down at Sedan after 
three or four battles, abandoning a disorganized nation 
to the mercy of the conquering army. In both cases the 
fate of the people is in the hands of its government, 
which has absorbed all its vitality and strength and par- 
alyzed all its energies. 

In money alone the Prussian subjects had to pay 
seven hundred million francs to France as a war indem- 
nity — a very large sum in those times, for Prussian sub- 
jects were not rich. Only the influence of Alexander, 
the Russian Czar, who concluded to make peace at Til- 
sit after his defeat at Friedland, prevented Napoleon 
from wiping Prussia and its paternal state off the map 
of Europe. But happily the political doctrine respon- 
sible for this collapse had not quite succeeded in re- 
ducing the people to that extreme point of political 
inertia which is the highest ideal of official Germany. 
Men will remain human beings even if tied hand and 
foot, and they will always try to Ihrow off their fetters 
and to loosen their bonds. All the German princes, 
however, now made themselves conspicuous by their 
servility towards I^apoleon ; at Weimar, the latter, sit- 
ting with the Czar in a box at the theatre, could look 
down from his seat upon un parterre de princes allemands. 
*' That is only a German prince, you blockhead !" says 
a French officer to a sentry who by mistake saluted a 
German grand duke as if he were a French general. 
They all crave favors from Paris, express their devotion 
M 177 



OLD GERMANY 

or friendly feelings to the master, and their admiration 
for his acts. G-erman princes and German nobility, more 
contemptible at that time than even Versailles aristoc- 
racy, are wonderful to behold ; they lick the hand that 
has throttled their people and that smites their own face. 
The people alone shows any dignity ; its indignation 
grows ; and the more it forgets its role of German sub- 
ject, the more it recovers gradually the habit of think- 
ing and deciding for itself. In obedience to French 
orders, the King of Prussia has closed German markets 
to the ships of England — the only nation that has pre- 
served its vitality and is fighting against France ; and 
England retaliates against the Prussian King by destroy- 
ing German ships. As usual, the nation must pay for 
the knavery of its rulers. Frederick William humbly 
begs as a favor from his master not to be reduced to the 
role of a simple German duke ; he has fallen so low that 
Stein, the only Prussian statesman who tries vainly to 
infuse some energy into this king, is compelled to leave 
Germany and take refuge at the Russian court. The 
people has now neither money nor bread ; the French 
have taken what was left. The paternal state, crum- 
bling like a rotten plank nnder their feet, has hurled them 
into the abyss. But since all these princes, all these 
noblemen, functionaries, dignitaries, and bureaucrats of 
all kinds have abandoned them to their fate, the German 
burghers and peasants, for the first time since Martin 
Luther, have now an opinion of their own, and they 
begin to express it openly. They are the only ones who 
have not completely surrendered, body and soul ; they 
literally compel some of these princes to march with, or 
rather behind them. *^ The misery was great, '^ says the 
German chronicler, ^'but the people were mad and 
wanted to fight. Napoleon had so exhausted the land, 

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OLD GERMANY 

and the people had been so mnch deprived of the neces- 
sities of life, that every one was glad to have at least a 
piece of steel in his fist/^ 

This is really the only bright page in German history. 
The nation was too much degenerated under German 
state rule to reconquer alone its independence ; it had 
been unable to maintain the Reformation of Luther 
without the assistance of Gustavus Adolphus and his 
Swedish armies ; it was too weak, too devoid of political 
energy and civic virtues to expel the French ruler with- 
out foreign aid ; but now under new leadership the 
nation rises at last. Its leaders were Blticher, formerly 
cashiered when a major by Prussian authority ; Gnei- 
senau, formerly sold by his prince with other German 
slaves to fight in the English ranks against the Ameri- 
cans ; and York, who had been compelled to serve in 
the Dutch colonies as a private soldier. Prussian ma- 
jesty, having vainly tried by submissiveness to appease 
his French master, now as a last hope makes an *' appeal 
to his people.'^ He has first tried everything else ; and 
he does this only because there is nothing else to do. 
Many German princes and noblemen — like the King of 
Saxony and the Rhenish nobility — are fighting their own 
countrymen. During the battle of Leipsic the Saxon 
regiments, compelled by their paternal government to 
fight for Napoleon, desert on the battle-field and go over 
to the national army; here, again, ^* obedience to the 
state " ceasing to be considered by many thousand Saxons 
as their first duty on earth. The German army enters 
Leipsic and the King of Saxony is taken ; the man 
should have been hanged as a traitor, but his royal and 
princely colleagues send him to Berlin, with all due 
honors, and he is at once released. On the march to 
Paris, the German princes are so incompetent, timorous, 

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OLD GERMANY 

and slow that Blllclier's rage explodes continually; he 
crosses the Rhine almost against orders, and literally 
compels his Prussian King to follow. He and York 
arrived before Paris with their half -starved and half- 
frozen men ; Blucher^s indignation was so great at one 
time that against superior orders he refused to wait for 
'' that hound/' as he called Bernadotte, who had become 
King of Sweden and the ally of Prussian majesty. When 
Prussian majesty arrives at last before Paris, Blticher 
requests his king to show himself to the troops, who 
have marched and fought all winter, following the 
French from Russia to Paris with worn-out boots, torn 
uniforms, and many unhealed wounds. Royal Prussian 
majesty at last deigns to take a look at them, and with 
truly royal Prussian intellect he sees only one thing : 
that his soldiers do not look at all like real Prussian 
soldiers, being untidy, unkempt, and not up to state reg- 
ulations and standards. Consequently he turns away 
with displeasure on his face, telling Blticher that " They 
look awfully bad." 

When the struggle is over, Germany continues to live 
in political bondage, although France has received a con- 
stitution under English and Russian prescription ; and 
the old paternal German state despotism continues to 
reign supreme in the land till 1848, when open revolt 
takes place. 



CHAPTER IX 

MODERK GERMANY 

Speakikg of the political programme of the French 
Jacobins, and of the consequences of their deadly doc- 
trine, Taine expresses himself as follows : 

'' By logical deductions they reduce the dimensions of 
individual man ; then they work to fit the real man to 
those dimensions. The state interferes in every branch 
of individual activity. It inspects workshops, trading 
operations and property, family affairs and education, 
religion, morals, and sentiments. It sacrifices the indi- 
viduals to the state, whose omnipotence is proclaimed. 
Such is their programme, and none is more injurious to 
progress, for it undertakes to lead mankind back to a 
social form in which it was already once enclosed, and 
from which it emerged eight centuries ago. . . . And 
the object of the state's omnipotence is naturally to re- 
generate mankind, for the theory on which it bases its 
rights assigns at the same time its object to the state. 
We must now dictate to individual man his ideas, his 
feelings. We shall prescribe for him what he must love 
and believe, and we shall rebuild after a determined pat- 
tern his intelligence and his heart." *, 

* Taine. La involution, pp. 82-121. 
181 



MODERN GERMANY 

How France has fared nnder this paternal doctrine we 
have seen ; how modern Germany is faring under it, how 
growing social and political ulcers are being developed 
under the unhealthy pressure, the few following glimpses 
may partly reveal, for behind a decorative constitution, 
behind the prosperous manufacture of cheap imitations 
of English and French goods, and American machinery, 
there lies a most diseased state of things. 

A well-regulated community it seems in the eyes of a 
foreign traveller, who notes its quaint features, its well- 
dressed and well-drilled soldiers, but a very sick com- 
munity to those who study court trials and forbidden 
literature, who hear the half-subdued growls of the lower 
classes, and who watch the infatuation and short-sight- 
edness of its military and bureaucratic caste. Without 
its militarism, the product of German state paternalism, 
the state could not exist ; but at the same time this de- 
grading and dangerous institution, instead of infusing 
healthy life, is gradually hastening the decay. 

Since the war of 1870, under the plea of saving the 
nation from renewed aggression, the old lessons re- 
ceived after the death of Frederick the Great have all 
been forgotten. '' Obedience to the state," to the mili- 
tary and bureaucratic caste, which alone represents to- 
day the German state, is again proclaimed as the only 
foundation of social prosperity ; obedience, implicit and 
prompt, to the old German system, to an omnipotent 
state prying into every man's life, ruling over a nation 
of " subjects," and represented by an army of military 
and civil functionaries. The American reader who wishes 
to form his own opinion on the present results of this 
doctrine will have to follow the writer here in the perusal 
of much evidence of a very ^^unpicturesque" character, 
collected mainly in recent judiciary trials, for anybody 

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MODERN GERMANY 

who wishes to examine carefully the present political 
and social condition of Germany is confronted immedi- 
ately with peculiar difficulties. 

The great care taken by the German government to 
suppress all evidence of the faults and crimes of its rep- 
resentatives leads to daily prosecutions for *' offence 
against the state, against the emperor/' or '^against a 
state functionary."* Imprisonment, fine, and suppres- 
sion of all printed evidence being the result of such 
prosecutions, the press is necessarily gagged, and, as 
we shall now see, all attempts at publishing the atroci- 
ties committed in the German barracks, in which every 
able-bodied subject has to pass from one to three years 
of his life, are unmercifully avenged by relentless per- 
secution. Since all the pamphlets and books in which 
conscientious and truly patriotic writers are calling their 
countrymen's attention to the growing abuses of the mili- 
tary and bureaucratic caste are immediately seized and 
suppressed, much evidence disappears. The evidence 
is only partially revealed before the courts when the 
prosecuted author proves his statements — a fact which 
does not save him, since his offence consists really in 
having told the truth. The present list of ^^ forbidden" 
literature in Germany is a rather long one, and if we 
should extract out of this mass of books and pamphlets 
(most of which have led their authors to prison) all the 
uninteresting cases of cruelty, barbarous treatment, and 
torture which were publicly exposed, hundreds, nay 
thousands, of pages would not suffice. 

Consequently we shall have to confine ourselves here 

*In the past five years 1239 persons have been sentenced in 
Germany to 2250 years of imprisonment for offending against the 
emperor personally. 

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MODERN GERMANY 

to one case which might be considered a fair sample ; 
and in order to appreciate fully the present condition of 
a German '^ subject," we must necessarily go into all its 
details. We shall take the case of Mr. Herman Scholer, 
on account of the great thoroughness with which he has 
treated all the facts he asserted in his publications and 
in the several courts where this scandalous affair was 
produced. 

Mr. Scholer published his first work in 1895, after he 
had left the army. The title of the work was : Mili- 
tary Horrors. Two Years as an Infantryman, Being 
immediately prosecuted for this publication, he estab- 
lished before the courts, by means of the military rec- 
ords, all the facts he had related. He was then pub- 
lishing another work. One Yearns Sentence to Military 
'^ Lahor/' in which he revealed the tortures to which 
German subjects are submitted to-day in the kind of 
semi -penal institutions established for "unpatriotic" 
Germans. After having proved, by the very government 
records and papers, that he had told nothing but the 
truth, he was sentenced to eight months' imprisonment, 
and his editor to a fine of one thousand marks. But 
though the state persistently continued its persecutions 
against Mr. Scholer, it had met in the latter a terrible 
and irrepressible foe. Scholer collected all the evidence 
produced in the trial, and has now published, in 1897, 
a new work. My Military Trial, in which he gives 
this evidence. This is leading him now towards new 
troubles, for, since the first day when he began to pro- 
test, the man has been under arrest, in jail, or pleading 
before a court, like a great many other Germans whose 
notions of dignity, manhood, and honor do not agree 
with the ofiicial standards of modern Germany. We 
beg the reader to follow Mr. Scholer's brave and re- 

184 ' • 



MODERN GERMANY 

markable struggle for freedom and right in the German 
empire. 

Before reporting for military duty as the law required, 
Mr. Scholer — being then only eighteen and a half years 
old — had committed the imprudence of addressing a 
letter to the editor of a liberal newspaper, the Freisin- 
nige Zeitung ; and this letter having fallen into the 
hands of the inspector of police of his native town, the 
latter, by virtue of the mysterious and undefined authority 
which the state possesses in German}^, had invaded his 
rooms one morning, ransacked his bureaus and drawers, 
examined all his correspondence, and hunted in every 
corner for "forbidden literature." The inspector had 
found nothing, but Mr. Scholer was not so docile as 
most of his countrymen, and lodged a complaint with 
the director of police against his subordinate, the in- 
spector. The only apparent result of this useless step 
against a state functionary seems to have been that 
when, later on, Mr. Scholer reported for military duty, 
he discovered that he had been "recommended" to the 
military authorities as a "social democrat." 

"When I entered the regiment," says Mr. Scholer, 
" I intended to do my duty fully during the two, or per- 
haps three, years I had to serve ; and I have done it too, 
as is evidenced by the reports of my two company chiefs 

Mr. K and Mr. W , who asserted in court that I 

was one of the best soldiers in the ranks. I was also 
determined to allow my superiors a wide margin of au- 
thority in all technical dealings between us ; but I had 
also made up my mind not to stand without due protest 
any acts injurious to my dignity as a man, whatever the 
consequences might be. This, in the eyes of our de- 
graded * patriotism^ may be considered as a crime 
against Heaven, but I believed that the young soldier, 

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MODERN GERMANY 

the young citizen who fulfils his duty to his country 
in serving his military time, is unworthy of wearing 
his uniform if he allows any man to commit brutalities 
on him. This is the delicate point ; and what shameful 
brutalities are committed, this is what these pages are 
intended to show. I know that a certain percentage of 
our officers are gentlemen, and even among non-commis- 
sioned officers I have found also respectable men ; con- 
sequently my reproaches are not addressed to them as a 
mass. No blind zeal leads me either; and it would be 
absurd to make the whole officer class responsible for 
the sins of a number of them. I do not attack persons 
here ; I attack the institutions." 

Mr. Scholer had been serving a few weeks when his 
corporal — German corporals have complete charge of 
their men, and are responsible for them — ordered him 
to scruh one of the soldiers who had been reported as 
" dirty. ''' The operation takes place with hard scrub- 
bing-brushes and soap. Scholer objected to "scrub- 
bing"^ this man. The corporal abused him at once, and, 
with much swearing and in a thundering voice, said : 
'^If I did not know you, I would slap your face now, 
but I am too shrewd ! I won't burn my fingers on you I 
I will catch you in some other way/' The corporal re- 
ported him for insubordination. 

" I had often occasion later on,'" says Scholer, '' to 
reflect upon the brutalities committed by non-commis- 
sioned officers, and on the beautiful spectacle presented 
by a dignified representative of our monarchical insti- 
tutions, with his ^king's frock" on, being kicked and 
beaten. And after a year I expressed my feeling to my 
company chief in the following words, which I repeat 
here to-day : * That there are companies in which every 
private has teen struclc in the face J This is the digni- 

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MODERN GERMANY 

fied manner in which every private in our German army 
is liable to be treated, no matter what excuses may be 
given by people who brag about our intelligence, our 
humanity, and our refinement. 

*' From the very first days of my service, I had noticed 
that I was looked upon in a very strange manner ; as I 
found out later, it was because I had been secretly re- 
ported as a *^ democrat/ But I did not know it as yet 
when the following incident happened : About Christ- 
mas, 1889, a letter arrived for me from a friend in Ham- 
burg, and when the corporal showed me the letter he 
said ^that he wished to read it/ I blushed, but sup- 
posing that this man would be ashamed of himself, I 
handed him back the letter without opening it. I sup- 
posed that he would return it. I was mistaken ; he 
opened the letter, read it, handed it to me, and said that 
I should deliver it to him later on. AVhat were the con- 
tents ? Nothing but private communications ; only my 
friend, hoping that I could get out for the holidays, 
ended his note by saying, 'I really hope that you will 
get out of your dungeon for a few days.' 

'' This was serious. When I was called before my 
company chief to have a talk with him about this letter, 
he qualified my friend as ^an enemy of the empire.' 
And from that day on, the inspection of my letters never 
ceased. It is true that I never delivered one so freely 
again ; the corporals then used to order me to show the 
signatures. I did it a few times till, finally, I became 
tired of this too. One day, when the corporal handed 
me a letter with the order to show the signature, I re- 
fused point-blank to receive it from him on such con- 
ditions. He had to take it away, but five minutes later 
another officer brought it back. A moment later this 
man appeared again, and proceeded at once to inspect 

187 



MODERN GERMANY 

minntely my baggage. He did not find the letter, and 
asked what I had done with it. I answered that I had 
burned it up. I shall never forget the manner in which 
he looked at me.^' 

From this time on Scholer had no peace. Paternal 
state had declared war against him. Being continually 
punished, he had made up his mind to stand everything 
like a man, when one day he was ordered to pump water 
into a tank. There was a "floater" in this tank con- 
nected with a register showing the depth of the water, 
and a small chain attached to the floater was hanging 
along a post. This trifling detail, as we shall see, was 
destined to lead to endless proceedings against him. 
He and a fellow - soldier had been pumping for more 
than ten minutes, but the register recorded no increase 
of water in the tank. " The register does not work," 
said his comrade; ''^the floater must stick somewhere. 
Pull the chain !" Scholer pulled the chain, but the 
register did not move. " Pull harder !" says his com- 
rade. Scholer does so, and the chain breaks. 

The next morning Scholer is reported to the colonel 
as follows : " Private Scholer, of the second company, 
being ordered to pump water in the West Yard tank, 
has violently destroyed the controlling apparatus." By 
order of the colonel, he has to appear before the first 
lieutenant, who has charge of this "important case." 
" Did you not know that this chain was connected with 
the floater?" "I did." "Well, did you not know, 
then, that it should not be touched by you ?" " I did 
not. I have never received any such order." 

The next day he is solemnly sentenced to five days' 
solitary confinement for having maliciously damaged a 
water register in such a manner that it is now unfit for 

use. 

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MODERN GERMANY 

Here begins a most characteristic struggle between our 
German '^ subject" and his paternal state. According 
to military regulations, a German private has the right 
to appeal, but he must first endure the penalty before he 
makes the appeal ; consequently Scholer, after emerging 
from the dark hole where he has been kept on bread and 
water only, in company with rats, appeals from the sen- 
tence, duly notifying his corporal of this fact. Such an 
appeal from the sentence of the commanding officer of 
the regiment makes a great sensation. Scholer is sum- 
moned first before the captain, who advises him, official- 
ly, not to do it. He insists. He is then summoned be- 
fore the major, who repeats, officially, the captain's ad- 
vice, and adds, good - naturedly, that it is to the inter- 
est of a private not to appeal. He insists again. The 
matter now goes before the commander of the division, 
who decides *^that Scholer has acknowledged his guilt, 
because he did not declare at once that he had no inten- 
tion to break the chain." The appeal is decided against 
Scholer, and as he has appealed without any reason for 
doing so, he is sentenced to seven days' more solitary 
confinement. Scholer goes to prison, comes out, and 
appeals again. 

Now, according to the regulations printed in his 
'^ Private's Handbook," he has the right to present that 
appeal himself in writing, or to ask the captain to write 
down a statement of the grievance. Scholer writes six 
pages, but the captain insists that he himself must write 
the statement. After a long struggle on this point, 
Scholer's own statement is annexed to the captain's re- 
port. In this appeal, Scholer — taking the ground that in 
common law, unless the evidence of intention is given, no 
man can be sentenced for having committed a crime or 
a misdemeanor ; and that there is no evidence whatever 

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MODERN GERMANY 

that he intentionally broke the chain — on the contrary — 
asks that the sentence he has already served be declared 
null and void. 

''The result?" says Scholer. "I was sentenced now 
to fourteen days more ; and let the reader hear the rea- 
sons. The sentence states : ' It is true that no inten- 
tion has been proved, but it is also true that Scholer 
cannot prove the contrary, and the penalty of five days' 
solitary confinement was really mild, considering Scho- 
ler's disobedience. — Signed, Beoi?"saet voi^ Schellek- 
DORF, Secretary of War.' " 

He is now shut in for fourteen days on bread and wa- 
ter, without a fire, in bitter January weather, in a den 
where the water oozes out from the damp walls more than 
three feet below ground ; and from this day his legs are 
subject to attacks of rheumatism, " from which he has to 
suffer while writing Tiis book at the age of twenty-six.'' 

As soon as this ordeal is over Scholer appeals again. 
This time to the emperor himself, and he makes an ad- 
ditional complaint against the Secretary of War. He 
signs the document, writing before his name, as he must 
do : Allerunterthdiiigster ; which word, destined to de- 
scribe a qualification special to Germans alone, cannot be 
translated in the English language, for the qualification 
has never existed among English-speaking people. It 
means something like : ''Your most subjected subject." 
Observe that Scholer has had in his favor all the time 
the evidence of his comrade, who has declared during 
all these proceedings "that, in his opinion, Scholer 
meant only to pull the chain to try the register, not to 
break the chain." Scholer adds in his complaint to the 
emperor, "that it is the duty of his accusers to prove 
his bad intention, not his duty to prove his innocence 
. . . although he has done this also." 

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MODERN GERMANY 

The imperial answer arrives at last in the form of a 
cabinet decree, stating that the complaint has not been 
presented according to military regulations, which re- 
quire that an oflS.cer should write the complaint. This 
is in contradiction to the regulations printed in the 
^^Private^s Handbook/" of which the state gives a copy 
to every soldier. The *' Handbook" must be wrong. 
So the appeal has to be written up again, this time by 
an officer, the company chief, who is a mortal enemy of 
Scholer, and who refuses to write down the words he 
dictates; the officer swears "that this remark is not to 
the point," that "such a word cannot be written down," 
"that it is a private's duty to be modest aiid not to assert 
luitli so miccli imi^udence." Scholer struggles with this 
man three afternoons. When Scholer states that at no 
time did he admit his guilt, although the lieutenant, to 
clear himself, has claimed that he did, the captain breaks 
into a passion. "How can a private have the unheard- 
of impudence to state that his lieutenant was wrong, and 
that his lieutenant's official report contains such a mis- 
take ?" After a long discussion, Scholer refusing to 
alter his statement, the officer writes it down. 

It is to be remarked that so far Scholer has never had 
access to the papers in his case ; his persecutors never 
had, and do not have, to communicate the evidence they 
have taken. And when the imperial decision arrives, 
they communicate to him only the lines containing the 
following words at the end of the document: "'The 
complaint of Private Scholer is rejected, as he has not 
established that his action was the result of an accident. 
But grace is granted hereby dispensing him from a new 
penalty." 

.'^ As 2b faithful subject and an ex-soldier of his majesty," 
says Scholer, "I must refrain from criticising such a 

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MODERN GERMANY 

sentence. I can only say that I felt sorry not to be able 
to appeal to a higlier authorit}^ I had not asked for 
^^ grace/'' and would have accepted without flinchmg an 
increased penalty. I do not believe that any one of my 
readers doubts of my innocence^, and it might interest 
the nation to know who advised the emperor when he 
signed this document. Although it may not be very 
convenient to inquire about it, would it not perhaps 
interest the German people to know who are the state 
functionaries, so far-famed for their loyalty, who lay 
such a paper before the emperor to be signed by him." 

This was only the beginning of Scholer^s persecutions. 
A few days later, on one of the hottest days of July, 
Scholer is ordered *' specially" to repeat certain drill 
exercises between one and two o'clock in the sun. With 
him are a few other "bad fellows," and this is a measure 
inflicted by the captain. This man orders Scholer to 
pack sixteen pounds of sand in his sack, and orders 
"running exercises." The order is repeated till Scho- 
ler's head begins to whirl, and he falls inanimate on the 
gronnd. In his fall he grabs the coat of a comrade. 
They carry him senseless to the hospital. The doctor 
orders him to bed, and says, "It is nothing." On the 
next day Scholer is on his legs again, and he is notified 
that the captain has reported him for disobedience, and 
that a court-martial is summoned to try him. 

" I felt very uneasy," says Scholer, "for I had excel- 
lent reasons to mistrust the justice of Prussian military 
courts." 

During the trial the military auditor states that 
" Scholer is a man who has shown by his insistence the 
most guilty obstinacy ; that a man of his intelligence 
could have become a corporal long ago ; that he has an 
iron constitution, and that consequently he could not 

192 



MODERN GERMANY 

faint" The sentence then reads as follows : "Private 
Scholer is sentenced to fourteen days of solitary confine- 
ment for having simulated sickness during drill exer- 
cises, thrown himself on the ground, and knowingly re- 
fused to perform his duty." 

"I was wild," says Scholer, "when I returned to my 
room. The omnipotence of military authority appear- 
ed before me in appalling reality. I ran with my head 
against the wall. I understood then how Prussian mili- 
tarism could kill a man or make him insane." 

Scholer decided to appeal. The auditor, or prosecu- 
ting officer, summons him to appear and advises him not 
to. Naturally enough the Prussian state does not like 
to hear so much noise made about its crimes. Scholer 
persists ; the state must show evidence that he was not 
really sick, but merely shamming. A new appeal ? Here 
the Prussian state has an easy way to stop Scholer. He 
is detached from his company and sent to Magdeburg, 
to serve there as a military laborer — Arheitsoldat ; for 
there are in Germany certain companies of such soldiers, 
leading very much the same life as an ordinary convict, 
although they have committed no crimes, but merely 
shown by their general conduct that they are not in 
sympathy with the noble institutions of the German 
empire. 

This stopped the appeal, and crushed Scholer, who, 
when his fourteen days are out (during which, of course^ 
he again lives on bread and water), is transported to 
Magdeburg. The corporal who has contributed most 
to his misery comes to his cell, loads his gun before 
him, and marches him off to the railroad station. He 
is not allowed to say a word to anybody. How can such 
a measure be taken ? The answer is easy. Scholer has 
been punished now so often that the men against whom 
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MODERN GERMANY 

he makes complaints have the right to incorporate him 
in a military labor company. The very men against 
whom the law allows him to state his grievances are his 
only judges. They, who are the accused parties, have 
the right to make practically a convict of their accuser. 
This is German justice, with its long-winded, Jesuitical 
regulations, which, under the plea of maintaining German 
superiority, German order, etc., hands over a man tied 
up hand and foot to any superior whose stupidity or 
mistakes he reveals. All the proceedings against him 
are secret. This measure is general in Germany, even 
for civilians arrested by the state for ordinary crimes. 
Scholer is arrested and imprisoned indefinitely by su- 
perior authority without being able to defend himself ; 
what the accusation is based upon, what witnesses have 
said, what evidence has been brought up against or for 
him, neither he nor any man arrested in Germany, be he 
civilian or soldier, has any right to know. He is com- 
pletely at the mercy of petty bureaucratic despots, just 
as his forefathers were in the eighteenth century when 
German brutality, hidden under a superficial varnish of 
German culture, was supreme in all the different king- 
doms or dukedoms of the empire. 

Thus Scholer begins his convict's existence at Magde- 
burg. What he has to do there, how he is treated, what 
the words honor, self-respect, manhood, mean in Magde- 
burg for certain German officers, in our modern epoch, 
form a most interesting work. Unhappily space for- 
bids us to relate all this sad story. When one closes Mr. 
Scholer's book. My Military Trial, a feeling of indig- 
nation and contempt, of disgust for all these products 
of German education cannot be suppressed. For it is 
the same old story as in the eighteenth century ; the 
military and bureaucratic caste contains to-day the same 

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MODERN GERMANY 

brutes, the same knaves, each one crouching before his 
superior, and treating his inferior like a dog ; and the 
people submits as meekly as ever, except a few victims 
like Scholer, to all barbarities of their rulers, indifferent 
to insult and abuse. 

Let us observe — and Scholer's adversaries, the func- 
tionaries of the German state, admitted the fact in 
court — that beating, kicking in the ribs, slapping the 
face, or knocking a German private on the head is not 
an exceptional occurrence. " It is the national custom 
in Germany to beat a recruit, unless he belongs to the 
privileged class of Einjdhriger — the young men of good 
families who, having received a higher college education, 
and being destined mostly to become state functionaries 
and officers, are allowed to pass a certain examination 
which shortens by one year their service as privates. 
Observe that if the poor recruit resents the insult, and 
defends himself against a kick or a blow, he is imme- 
diately court-martialed and shot, or sentenced for life ; 
but that the "superior" runs no risk, and knows this 
fact too — he is safe. He can kick and beat that defence- 
less German subject as much as he pleases, for the latter 
must not lift a finger. Observe that German honor is 
the stereotyped word in everybody^'s mouth in Germany, 
in every school, college, and state institute ; that the 
present Emperor of Germany alludes to this extraordi- 
nary virtue of official Germany almost every week in 
his constant effusions of imperial eloquence. Observe 
what a stage of moral degradation a German function- 
ary must have reached when he lifts his fist to a man 
who he knows will never strike back. How often he 
will do it on his German countryman ! but how seldom 
he would try such methods on a boxing Anglo-Saxon 
amateur who might knock all his teeth out of place as a 

195 



MODERN GERMANY 

protest against German manners. Observe what high 
standards of civilization can prevail in a state allowing 
such daily practices ! Imagine, finally, a national army 
composed of all the able-bodied citizens of an English- 
speaking country ; and functionaries appointed by the 
state slapping their faces and kicking them into obe- 
dience and "German discipline"^! Has the reader suffi- 
cient imagination to see such a fanciful spectacle in the 
dim background of his '^^ barbarous Anglo-American" 
mind ? 

In discussing this subject with German officers of truly 
good education, as the writer has often done, one hears 
always the same excuse. " One-half of our recruits are 
stupid or lazy ; some of them are hardly more intelligent 
than an ox, though all have had a good state-school edu- 
cation. They may know how to read and write, but this 
does not cure stupidity, nor laziness. Now our non- 
commissioned officers are directly responsible to their 
superiors for the bad appearance or conduct of their 
men. The corporal exercises paternal authority over 
them, he provides their education, and looks after their 
comfort. Who can blame him if, when worn out by the 
stupidity or indolence of our recruits, he hits them in 
the face, or kicks them in the legs to ' straighten them 
up"? And, besides, all our recruits are used to it, and 
never object to this method. We know that the right 
of the recruit to complain of ill-treatment is an illusory 
right, a perfect farce ! We know that it exists only on 
paper for show and appearance. But what else can we 
do in Germany if our recruits cannot be drilled without 
such methods ?" 

These, then, are the practical results of paternal Ger- 
man civilization, and education ! No possibility of get- 
ting men to perform the duties of German citizens with- 

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MODERN GERMANY 

out slapping them in the face and kicking them in the 
legs ! A beantiful result for the official leaders of the 
German fatherland, of which one hears very little in 
lyric effusions of German patriotism — a fact telling a 
fearful tale. How long will German emperors, like the 
present ruler, be able to point with pride to the wonder- 
ful results of German patriotism, German honor, Ger- 
man education obtained with paternal state machinery ? 
How long before some enraged mob, assisted by national 
soldiers, will hang much -decorated German function- 
aries on German lamp -posts, with their military em- 
blems of honor dangling on their heels ? How long 
before history repeats itself again ? 

We have left Private Scholer at work with wheelbar- 
row and spade in the uniform of a laboring soldier. Here 
is one of the regulations to which he and all his com- 
rades are submitted : '^ The superiors of a laboring pri- 
vate have the right to examine all the letters and postal 
packages addressed to the soldier, or sent out by him ; 
and they shall decide whether such letters or parcels 
shall be forwarded or delivered." 

Here is a German subject, or citizen, who, according 
to the state's own evidence, has always performed well 
his technical military duties, whose only crime is to have 
protested against the shameful conduct of state func- 
tionaries, and who is withdrawn from all intercourse 
with the world and left prostrate and gagged by the 
state at the feet of the very functionaries against whom 
he has a legal right to complain ! Now these function- 
aries can deprive him for a year — the third year of his 
military service — of all communication with his family 
and his friends, of all moral consolation, of all material 
pecuniary help. He is dead to the world, like the pris- 
oners of the Spanish Inquisition, whose methods Ger- 

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MODERN GERMANY 

many now copies closely. He is cut off from the world 
by the state. And who is the state ? One or two Prus- 
sian functionaries, perfect scoundrels ; one of them is a 
captain who occasionally summons Scholer and lectures 
him on devotion to the emperor, submission to authority, 
and other such German doctrines ; and then, as Scholer 
refuses to admit that he is guilty of any offence against 
the German state, this representative of German official 
culture — Bildung — inflicts upon him continual torture 
of mind and body. But others who lack Scholer's splen- 
did fortitude are finally worn out by a hundred differ- 
ent kinds of tortures, and succumb to the temptation 
of breathing without suffering; by submitting to the 
German slave-driver, these men are allowed to receive 
letters and money, and to inquire about their families. 
They even get a glass of beer occasionally, or are al- 
lowed to smoke. 

Can an American or an English reader picture to him- 
self this refined German state inquisition, copied from 
Spain by modern Germany ? 

At last Scholer finishes his military career. His three 
years of service are ended, and he publishes his book. 
Apparently he is free ; in reality the struggle goes on. 
The state being unable to kill him, thanks to his strong 
constitution, now tries to strangle his voice, for the man 
is a terrible adversary with his intelligence, his educa- 
tion, and his deadly accuracy in stating facts and de- 
ducing conclusions. The paternal state has found that 
out at last, as it might have done long ago were its func- 
tionaries more intelligent and less brutal. The German 
police seizes the work. Now, under the law, the pos- 
session alone of forbidden literature or printed matter 
is an offence against the German state. The author, 
Mr. Scholer, and his editor, the bookseller Robert Lutz, 

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of Stuttgart, are brought before the First Criminal Court 
at Hanover. The case is heard, witnesses being called 
on both sides. Here is a significant fact : the officers 
mentioned by Scholer in his publications cannot deny 
what their own military records prove, but they have 
free access to the presiding judge's 'private room in the 
court-house ; there they can all chat and smoke cigars 
with the judges, for they are both, the officers and the 
judges, functionaries of the same paternal state which 
selects, rewards, dismisses, and pays them. They are 
bureaucratic brothers.* 

For instance, Scholer has accused one Captain Moll 
of having heaped so many punishments on the head of 
a weak-minded, half -idiotic soldier named Almstaedt, 
that the man became insane. His insanity is proved 
by witnesses ; but Captain Moll had continued to per- 
secute and torture this man, who claimed to be a king, 
a grand duke, etc., till finally the man had hanged him- 
self in his cell. But Captain Moll and the president 
of the court continue their social chats in the latter's 
private room. Think of the honor of a judge who holds 
social chats with witnesses in his room ? 

But the judge knows what he is doing, for he is pro- 
moted by the state as soon as the trial is over to a better 
office in Halle. And Scholer is sentenced to eight months' 
imprisonment, and the editor to a fine of one thousand 
marks. 

The judge's sentence is a characteristic document. 
He states that Scholer, according to evidence, certainly 
fulfilled well his technical duties as a soldier, but that 
his publications show a complete lack of respect for the 

* The same methods were brought to light in France during the 
Zola trial. 

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MODERN GERMANY 

institutions and the functionaries of his country ; in one 
place he has called the emperor a simple superior, which 
expression might imply that the G-erman emperor is 
simple-minded. It is true that Scholer denied this in- 
tention, but the word is an offence. ^' The sense of 
military order and subordination/' says the judge, '^is 
completely lacking in him. And, nevertheless, a warn- 
ing word came recently from very highest authority (the 
emperor), proclaiming that it was our duty to hold high 
the military standard of the nation.* If the emperor 
has spoken thus — he, the herald of the German nation — 
it is the duty of every German to assent to his doctrine. 
Unhappily these words seem to have had no effect on 
the accused. '^ 

The Franlcfort Journal, one of the leading periodicals 
of Germany, commenting on this sensational trial, using 
great care to avoid prosecution, says : " Two of Scholer's 
captains declared in court that he was a good and con- 
scientious soldier. Consequently it was absurd to say 
that he was opposed to military authority. The con- 
flicts began only after Scholer became convinced that 
he was unjustly punished ; and his only opposition be- 
gan when he used his right to complain of a superior, 
and when, having obtained no redress, he appealed to 
higher and higher authority." 

The sentence of the editor is also a characteristic feat- 
ure in the case. He printed and sold Scholer's publi- 
cations, which ran through eight editions in very short 
time. The judge finds that the editor must evidently 
have approved Scholer's attacks on state institutions, 
else he would not have printed and sold them -, this 

* We translate the words literally, without pretending to explain 
theh- obscure meaning. 

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makes him a partner in Scholer's fault. Eor instance, 
in one place Sclioler has called Captain Moll ^'my most 
Christian captain/" " Evidently/" says the judge, "the 
editor knew that this expression was ironical, and that 
consequently it was an insult against the honor of an 
officer. And by printing such an insult he is also guilty 
of having insulted a German officer."" 

Such is the perverted logic to which state omnipo- 
tence has led in Germany ; such is the system by which 
under the new regime of the last few years the freedom 
of political opinion has been practically abolished. As 
such cases are generally of a trivial nature, and as the 
German press is completely under the supervision of the 
state, they do not attract in foreign lands the attention 
they really deserve ; and as they have no other apparent 
result than the imprisonment of individuals unknown 
to fame, they are hardly reported outside of the narrow 
limits where these outrageous proceedings occur. But 
the very triviality of all these cases shows how constant, 
how general is the unhealthy pressure of the German 
state. Every day, at every hour, this crushing influence, 
applied by a vast army of agents, of military and civil 
officers of all kinds, is bending and deforming every 
mind, every intellect, and every conscience in the land. 

We have seen what the barrack-life of a private sol- 
dier can be. Let us see what a German officer himself 
thinks of this system. Under the title Brilliant Misery, 
Mr. Rudolf Krafft, an officer himself before he was dis- 
missed for having revealed the truth, has aroused all 
Germany"s attention in a recent book. He was natu- 
rally prosecuted too for offence against the state, and 
the many editions of his books Avere seized. Speaking 
of the brutalities, kicks, etc., inflicted on the privates, 
he says; *^ Anybody who has followed the proceedings 

201 



MODERN GERMANY 

of onr military courts knows that these brutalities should 
be divided into two classes : those resulting from a fit 
of momentary passion, and those which consist of such 
tortures as often make the hair stand to hear of them. 
Both cases are frequent ; but they are not so much the 
consequence of innate cruelty and inhumanity as the 
consequence of our whole system. All our army organi- 
zation is based on an abnormal foundation, and just as 
a body impregnated with bad blood will show ulcers and 
abscesses, so is our army manifesting to-day ulcers which 
should be attributed not to the members but to the 
whole system. Let me give some practical illustrations 
from experiences of real life to show how our machine 
works. 

" There is a great city in Germany which has many 
bridges, and there is a military regulation that no mili- 
tary salute shall be made on any of these bridges. 
Why this regulation exists it is impossible to tell ; but 
it exists, and must be exactly followed. A private walks 
on the bridge and suddenly perceives his colonel ; he 
pulls down his coat and stops, making a beautiful salute. 
To his great astonishment, the colonel jumps towards 
him and asks his name and company. Now begins the 
trouble. The colonel is furious; he rushes to the bar- 
racks and summons before him the captain of the com- 
pany, and also the major. 

"'Why has Private X stopped and saluted on that 
bridge ?' 

'^ The only sensible answer would be, ' Please ask him, 
for he knows more about it than we do." But of course 
such an answer is not allowed. Consequently the cap- 
tain and the major have to stand there and be scolded 
like two school-boys, for they each have a wife and chil- 
dren to provide for, and the colonel is the man who, 

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MODERN GERMANY 

whenever he pleases, can write a short note concerning 
the bad behavior of certain ' school-boys/ which note 
puts an officer immediately on the retired list. Conse- 
quently one has to stand very still, be very pleasant and 
nice, and suffer anything. When the colonel has finished, 
the major turns his horns on the captain to teach him a 
lesson. The captain, having now had two superiors at 
his throat, trembles in his boots, for a similar trouble 
may have happened once before to him, and he sees him- 
self, in imagination, walking about town umbrella in 
hand and a stove-pipe hat on his head. Now, in order to 
put an end to such risks in future, our captain knows 
exactly what he has to do. He summons the corporal 
before him, and 'explodes on him^ in such a way that 
the barrack - walls tremble. Perhaps he also puts him 
under ' confinement to barracks ' to teach him his duty. 
Now Nemesis has reached our non-commissioned officer, 
the corporal, and he catches the private. And as in 
our military buildings insults and coarseness augment 
at the rate of the square of the distances between the 
degrees of rank, the corporal, howling with rage, falls 
upon the private, kicks him at once, and knocks him in 
the face with all the might of his fist, in order to ' teach 
the d — d hog how to behave.^" 

Thus, to use the words of Taine quoted above, " the 
dimensions" of these four men have become wonder- 
fully 'reduced^ by state pressure, every one of them 
being at the mercy of his superior ; he is beaten if he is 
a private, or if he is an officer, he sees his career broken 
and his bread and butter suddenly taken away from him. 
How the dimensions of a human being become reduced 
if he wears the uniform of a G-erman officer, a glance at 
the system can tell us. "What feudal nobility was form- 
erly in Germany, the hierarchic functionaries of the 

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MODERN GERMANY 

German state are to-day. They are divided into two 
great classes : the officers constituting the military caste, 
and the civil functionaries constituting the bureaucratic 
caste. Insubordination against the former, whatever 
the sufferings of the subordinate may be, means death 
or some punishment almost equal to it. Insubordina- 
tion against the latter, manifested either by public criti- 
cisms, speeches, pamphlets, or conversations, means im- 
prisonment or fine, or both together. This, because the 
German state could not exist a week without compulsory 
obedience to itself and consequently to its agents. If 
the individual were allowed to criticise his " superiors" — 
and everybody in Germany has '^ superiors" and "infe- 
riors " — the whole fabric would fall to pieces, for it is not 
built on the principle of common interests, mutual con- 
cessions, and respect for individual rights, etc. It is 
built on the Jacobin doctrine so well described by Taine, 
the state having the power and the mission to trim down 
individual man to its foreordained pattern, ''cut out 
with a pair of legishitive scissors" ; to repress all his 
thoughts and feelings if not conformable to the pattern, 
and substitute therefor artificial products of state educa- 
tion and training. To obtain such a result, to be able 
to cram every member of the nation into the state pat- 
tern, into the official frame, the German state requires 
two things : First, complete obedience of the individual, 
who must abandon all originality and enter into the state 
mould, there to receive his shape ; secondly, complete 
devotion to the state's interests on the part of its func- 
tionaries who have to do the trimming, the teaching, the 
educating, the inspecting, the scolding, the enforcing 
and compelling, the watching, the punishing, the re- 
warding, and the crushing. 
Without complete submissiveness on one side, and 

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MODERN GERMANY 

complete control on the other, the German state cannot 
live. Consequently any opposition, criticism, or blame 
expressed by the indiyiclnal becomes an offence against 
the state ; for the German mind cannot conceive a civ- 
ilized state where this complete submissiveness on one 
side and this complete control on the other do not ex- 
ist ; and the more completely they exist, the better the 
state must be according to the German notion. How 
conld a state exist where free criticisms can be made 
against its functionaries, where the government is not a 
school-master, and the citizens treated like children ? 
Must not children be compelled to learn ? Do not speak 
to him of the Anglo-Saxon doctrine of individual rights 
and liberties ! Certainly England and the United States 
have much money and some power, but logically they 
should have none ! Infallible German state logic can 
fully explain this American and English anomaly ; every- 
body in Germany can explain it, except a few who call 
themselves liberals. The only reason why England and 
America have been able to get along so far without the 
German method is that England is an island inhabited 
by a nation of shopkeepers, which cannot be reached 
easily ; and because the United States have a whole con- 
tinent full of silver and gold, where, notwithstanding 
American mob -rule, denial of justice, lynch law, and 
such other manifestations of innate Anglo-Saxon brutal- 
ity, people have been able to get along without a civil- 
ized government. But it will not last — official logic 
says so. England is in complete decadence already, and 
all her colonies will soon revolt against her tyrannical 
rule ; and the United States are already fully demoral- 
ized by a corrupt government, offices there being bought 
and sold to the highest bidder by politicians and dema- 
gogues. 

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MODERN GERMANY 

Thus by a very strange optical faculty peculiar to the 
German intellect, the state does not appear as a horizon- 
tal commonwealth (if I may use the expression), as it 
does to Anglo-Saxon eyes, but rather as a vertical hierar- 
chical ladder. On top of this ladder is the king, who 
holds his power from above, like everybody on the lad- 
der ; he receives it from God, vertically so to speak, not 
from parliament or the people or other points of the 
horizon. Under the king, on the next round of the lad- 
der, are the great functionaries, those who are entitled 
in Germany to be called " excellency," the ministers and 
officers above the rank of lieutenant-general, and such 
other dignitaries who hold their power from the king. 
On the third round of the ladder — counting always from 
the sky downward — come other functionaries. Then, 
step by step, you descend this bureaucratic ladder till 
you get to the " low people," not much higher above 
ground than overgrown children. Every man has su- 
periors standing above him, except the king, or Kaiser, 
the head of the state, who settles accounts only with 
God; and every man has '* inferiors," whom he can order 
about and command, except the lowest class, the peasant, 
the artisan, the common man whose functions in the 
state consist simply in being taught and governed, whose 
duties consist simply in prompt obedience as subject or 
soldier, and whose welfare is looked after by vertical 
authority. Under this class comes the cattle. 

Such is the German social system, not a horizontal 
commonwealth, where every man contributes to the gen- 
eral cohesion and prosperity according to his natural 
weight, with central pivots, axes, and wheels on which 
the political body turns, with well - defined spheres of 
action for these political pivots and wheels ; but a ver- 
tical organization in which man's political and social 

206 



MODERN GERMANY 

activity consists in climbing on the ladder from one 
round to another. This is the German ^'ascent of life," 
or Bildtcng, the only one which can be seen, looking 
through German spectacles. 

The English- American political clockwork in which 
the amount of friction between all the component parts 
is reduced to a minimum, where all the different pieces 
are kept in place, not by dint of brutal pressure, but by 
a clever juxtaposition of the wheels, allowing no piece 
to clash with its neighbor, and where the whole forms a 
complete system built for a practical, not a theoretical 
object, the conformity of the nation's time with sidereal 
and other natural laws regulating the universe — all this 
is an unnatural, almost scandalous performance in the 
eyes of '' ofi&ciaF'' Germany. For the latter, vertical 
pressure from superior authority, paternal plumb-line, 
and energetic rectification of all activity not in conform- 
ity with this plumb-line, hierarchic state ladder, with its 
various official dignities and official rounds, leading Ger- 
mans towards heaven, whence the head of the state de- 
rives political wisdom and paternal authority — these 
contrivances alone constitute a well-organized political 
and social system. Necessarily when the ladder becomes 
top-heavy, as it did after the death of Frederick the 
Great, the slightest shock of earthquake caused by vol- 
canic fires, by fanatic democracy with its victorious 
generals, upsets the equilibrium, and a treaty of Basel 
must be signed ; and when, later on, a Napoleonic whirl- 
wind breaks out, vertical-ladder authority tumbles flat 
on the ground, and lies horizontally at last before the 
world. When, in 1848, under the weight of vertical 
pressure, the lower and even the middle steps of the 
ladder break, split the machine, and decline to submit 
any longer to the strain, cold steel can alone repair the 

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MODERN GERMANY 

broken timbers. Bayonets and artillery can re-establish 
order for a while, but whether this state can keep plumb 
depends at all times upon the excellence of the men who 
are on top, npon their natural ability in maintaining the 
line plumb, upon the quickness of their eye, and their 
gymnastic or acrobatic skill. 

By what sacrifices of manhood and dignity the plumb- 
line of the German system is kept up, a glance at the 
distorted figure of its dominating caste, the military, 
will show. 

**^The military cadet, ^' says Mr. KraSt,* who was a 
cadet himself, " is not educated in Germany to become 
a man. He is only trained to be an officer. And when 
I say ' officer,^ I mean it in the full sense of the word ; 
for all the exalted notions of that caste's importance are 
at once inoculated by the state into the mind of the 
cadet. The state repeats to him every day the old song 
of 'the First Estate in the land.' The military uniform 
does the rest, and from the early beginning of the cadet's 
education you discern already in the little puppet- sol- 
dier, whose ears are generally more asinine than those 
of other boys of his age, the germs of the military over- 
bearing temper. He speaks already of the civilians as 
'those scabby fellows'; he calls the private 'that block- 
head,' or 'that cursed chap.' The influence of parents 
is lacking, and the tone of bully which prevails in the 
whole institution impregnates him more and more. You 
do not notice it when the cadet is out of doors ; on the 
streets he has elegant manners ; but the wide chasm 
which separates the officer's caste from the civilian pop- 
ulation, even here in Bavaria, has its origin, without any 
exaggeration, in the cadet schools. This is the root of 

* Das gldnzende Elend. Stuttgart. 
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MODERN GERMANY 

the evil, whatever our cabinet ministers may assert when 
they say that our officers are also members of the na- 
tion. There is only one solution : abolish our cadet 
schools."" 

The cadet has become an officer, now free to act as he 
pleases after having been confined day and night in his 
school under stern discipline. These very men whom 
he could not approach before will now accept even the 
invitation to drink a bottle of champagne. There is only 
one trouble, a very general one in Germany : if he is not 
assisted by rich parents, how can he afford to live with a 
small pay among all the exigencies of his new station in 
life ? Temptations surround him ; as Mr. Krafft says, 
the Jew money-lenders, women, gambling, and drinking 
absorb all his attention, for his profession requires from 
him small intellectual effort. 

'^ The sinking of the intellectual level of our officers 
as a class," says the author, " during the last ten years, 
is a notorious fact in Germany, which none of us can 
conceal. There were, formerly, for instance, some dis- 
tinguished scientific and literary men among the officers 
in Wiirtemberg ; where do we find any to - day ? . . . 
When a lieutenant leaves the gates of the barracks, he 
has really not one thought in his head. As a recreation 
he can only seek pretty women, gamble, or drink. It is 
not the wearing of a uniform, but his bad education and 
his mind-killing profession that produce this result ; and 
the evidence of it is the fact that military doctors as a 
rule are much less addicted to such pastimes ; for they 
have to work with their brains, not only with their legs. 
If anybody believes that my statement is exaggerated let 
him go to the tavern and listen to the conversations at 
each table. After he has heard the different groups of 
lawyers, doctors, and professors who sit there by them- 
o 309 



MODERN GERMANY 

selves, let him listen to the talk at the tables of the 
officers/' 

The pay of a lieutenant of infantry is seventy -five 
marks a month (not quite twenty dollars) ; and he re- 
ceives besides, according to the town where he is located, 
a small indemnity, which, according to Mr. Kraff t^s elab- 
orate calculations, sometimes doubles this sum ; but the 
total does not even cover expenses for bare necessaries 
of life. Unless his parents support him, he becomes in- 
evitably the prey of the Jew money-lender, who is always 
ready to trust him, provided the paper is endorsed by 
another officer ; and then he has no other resource but 
to marry a girl with money, not because he likes her, 
but because she possesses a dowry sufficient for his needs. 
The state regulates beforehand the conditions of the 
marriage ; for the lieutenant cannot marry unless the 
girl has given evidence to the state that she possesses an 
income of two thousand five hundred marks (about six 
hundred dollars), representing in Germany a capital of 
seventy thousand marks, or eighteen thousand dollars. 

^^A girl whose father can afford to part with such a 
sum for one of his children,'''' says Mr. Krafft, ^^is not as 
a rule a girl who has learned how to work, for she did 
not need it. ^ Scratch the Russian and you find a Tar- 
tar' is a proverb which we can apply to nearly all our 
well-to-do families. Dresses, much appearance, some 
French conversation, and the performance on a piano 
of some hackneyed pieces cannot conceal the real igno- 
rance resulting from our fashionable female school edu- 
cation. Dancing, concerts, theatres, sea-shore recreations, 
and flirting are the only popular performances in that 
class ; and as our officers are notoriously fond of such 
recreations, every girl in Germany wishes to marry a 
lieutenant." 

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MODERN GERMANY 

"Every man in our military organization/^ says Mr. 
Krafft, " is at the complete mercy of his superior ; he is 
not a man any more, but a worthless puppet. The right 
to appeal from a superior's decision is equal to zero. 
Every superior takes the position of an absolute monarch, 
and it is sometimes much more difficult to live under 
him than to live in a Siberian colony under * the Rus- 
sian Father.' The regulations relating to the right of 
complaint are of such a nature that a glance at them 
shows their worthlessness ; but it is especially in relation 
to his means of existence that an officer is at the com- 
plete mercy of his superior. There is no question of 
'right' here ; for the matter is very summarily and ar- 
bitrarily disposed of by these words : 'Shut your mouth, 
or retire and be pensioned off.' Military men in Ger- 
many know that my criticisms, bitter as they are^ are 
true. 

''From 1884 to 1891, I have had six different cap- 
tains, and every one of them has been retired and pen- 
sioned off. During that time I have had nine majors, 
and of these only one is serving now — the least intel- 
ligent of them all according to my own and to other 
people's opinion. One of them is doing good service 
elsewhere than in our army ; but the other seven can be 
seen walking about and trying to live on their pensions, 
although they are as healthy as can be. Just as the lieu- 
tenant frets for want of cash to pay for necessaries of 
life, so are the other officers worried to death because 
they are in the position towards their superiors of a beg- 
gar asking for bread. The 'friendly' note which the 
officer receives — the 'blue letter' as we call it in the 
service — notifies him that a change in his post is con- 
templated, ' but that if he chooses he can ask to be re- 
lieved from further duties.' Now just think how this 

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MODERN GERMANY 

note affects him. The officer is generally a major, forty 
or fifty years old ; his children are receiving their most 
important education, and he is making pecuniary sacri- 
fices to that end. Now the state appears and dismisses 
this man, who perhaps has been wounded in its service ; 
it puts him out of doors. Whoever has seen the tears 
which these ' blue letters ' cause, the bitterness, nay, the 
hatred, which are the result, knows what danger Ger- 
many runs with its new favorite principle of "^ rejuvenat- 
ing the army.'' 

'*^And here is another foul spot in our ^ First Estate.' 
As we said, the inferior is at the mercy of his superiors, 
tied up hand and foot, and the latter can do with him 
what they please because the right of complaint is a 
mere humbug, and because anybody can be discharged 
and pensioned off for no reason whatever. This notori- 
ous fact has serious consequences. The anxiety to keep 
your situation and the feeling that you are at the mercy 
of a single man produce phenomena which greatly re- 
semble lying, and which do not agree much with our 
famous standard of honor. And besides, under such 
despotic methods, manhood deteriorates more and more. 
Just as the lieutenant lowers himself often before his 
creditors, so the superior officers and all staff officers 
must continually sacrifice their dignity in order to climb 
a step higher." 

Thus manhood, self-respect, honor, are being "trimmed 
down " by the paternal state in modern Germany to suit 
its "official" standards and regulations; and thus the 
official "plumb-line" departs more and more from the 
perpendicular of nature. Not only does that " First Es- 
tate " lose gradually its manhood, but the nation has to 
pay heavy taxes to support pensioned able-bodied men 
who are anxious to work, but who, having devoted the 

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MODERN GERMANY 

best part of life to learn their profession, are unable when 
once ont of G-erman barracks to make themselves useful 
to the community. Every German city is full of these 
idlers, of these outcasts, of these " retired ^^ officers, whose 
education has been such that as a rule they could not 
earn a dollar a day if they had to work for a living ; and 
the German nation has to support them, because the 
major's wife could not perhaps agree with the colonel's 
wife, because the captain could not make a sufficient dis- 
play at the garrison, because the superior was conceited 
or jealous, an idiot or a knave. To uphold such a sys- 
tem, which allows a human being to control absolutely 
the happiness, the activity, the career, and the honor of 
a fellow-being, is a heavier task than any state has ever 
been able to perform in past history. Whither the system 
leads is easy to see by watching the growing discontent. 
To uphold it in order to maintain a national political ex- 
istence is, to use a vulgar expression, ''^playing a game 
which is not worth the candle." Hence the democratic 
socialistic success. 

"Our representatives in parliament," says Mr. Krafft, 
"affirm that there is a chasm between the officer caste 
and the people ; the government denies this, of course ; 
it is part of its business ; but nevertheless the necessary, 
unavoidable consequence of our system is that the state 
impregnates its officers with doctrines which are dia- 
metrically opposed to the feelings of our people. What 
is understood by our caste prejudices consists generally 
of such useless, ludicrous notions that it is my duty to 
refer to them here. What does our state understand by 
its ^ First Estate ' ? Can such a thing exist in a civilized 
country ? The men who break stones for a living are in 
their humble way a hundred times more useful to society 
than our lazy, uniformed German noblemeu, who spend 

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MODERN GERMANY 

their days or nights in stupid parades, in drinking cham- 
pagne, in gambling, or in dissipation. And even admit- 
ting that such an unreasonable and dangerous division 
should be made as that between our ''educated^ and 
our ^non-educated' class, is it not a fact that our offi- 
cers to-day, to judge from their education, are the very 
people who should not occupy the first position ; for our 
professors, doctors, and lawyers have learned more. I 
know that there are exceptions, and that college learning 
does not necessarily produce intelligence ; but is it not a 
fact with us in Germany that the great mass of our offi- 
cers, as I have shown in preceding chapters, stands much 
below other classes in real education ? And what does 
the state mean now with its regulations of ' marriage in 
conformity with the requirements of classes ' ? Who are 
the girls whom officers cannot marry ? In the first place, 
all the daughters of men who work with their hands. 
The daughter of an artisan ! — Shameful ! She may be as 
honorable and well educated as you like ! — Never ! But 
the daughter of a well-to-do speculator or manufacturer, 
yes ! Why ? Simply because the latter has money, and 
the more money she has the higher she stands, whatever 
the origin of this money may be." 

We refrain from quoting more instances mentioned by 
Mr. Krafft for fear of tiring the reader. Those inter- 
ested in watching more closely other grave results of this 
law prohibiting officers from marrying girls without a 
dowry can find in his v^ork, BrilUant Misery, all the in- 
formation they need. Some of the results can be sur- 
mised ; for naturally the state thus puts a premium on 
vice. We have now to examine another disastrous re- 
sult of German official civilization, more barbarous, if 
not more degrading. 

^'Another peculiarity of our system," says Mr. Krafft, 

214 



MODERN GERMANY 

^^ which is contrary to national feelings, is the state regu- 
lation compelling a man to fight a duel. I will not dis- 
cuss the propriety of allowing young men to fight or not 
to fight. But I say that there is no question about the 
impropriety for a married man to engage in such per- 
formances ; for the man who has a wife and children has 
more sacred duties to fulfil than to expose his life frivo- 
lously. But here again the spirit of caste of our officers 
interferes, with its usual contempt for all rules of true 
duty and true morality. Either the officer shall fight, 
or else the state pensions him off, and his career is 
broken. If anybody can see what honor has to do with 
such a regulation, he is more clear-sighted than I am ; 
for I cannot see it. It seems to me that honor and mo- 
rality should always agree, and nobody can assert the 
contrary. I would even say that honor springs from 
morality. But now in our officers' caste common vul- 
gar morality and their artificial gingerbread concep- 
tion of honor are often diametrically opposed to each 
other.'' 

And now the German state, in its solicitude for the 
nation's welfare, imposes class legislation by instituting 
what it calls its court of honor. This is a powerful in- 
stitution, as we shall see, for it affects the standing in 
the community of all people who, in the course of regu- 
lar military service, once wore on their backs an officer's 
coat ; of all civilians who were not mere privates in young- 
er days, who are retired from the army and engaged in 
. more useful pursuits — an institution whose decrees can 
be compared only to a similar one in the Catholic Church 
— excommunication. Both the Roman Catholic Church 
and the German state, working on the same principle of 
despotic authority, with the same aim, the pretended 
improvement of the people, are reaching the same re- 

215 



MODERN GERMANY 

suits ; they brand a man's reputation with their iron, 
and, unable to kill him physically, they declare him un- 
worthy of his countrymen's affection and respect. 

These courts overrule all the regular courts, and they 
are bound by no laws ; for the law in Germany does not 
allow fighting, nor is it permitted to shoot at a man with 
the intention to kill him. But the German courts of 
honor — whatever the word ^' honor" means there — com- 
pel any man who wears an officer's coat, or who has ever 
worn one, to disobey the law ; or they can brand him as 
an outcast if, after retiring to private life, he makes him- 
self objectionable to the state, as happened to Mr. Krafft, 
for instance, the gentleman whom we have quoted above, 
who was debarred by a court of honor from keeping his 
officer's title because his criticisms were unbecoming 
a German officer. 

"These courts," says Krafft, "are the fetters by which 
all the rights of the officer are securely bound and tied 
up. A wink from above, and all that is white becomes 
black. Of course we have regulations about forbidden 
influence, but their practical application remains always 
a myth. And, finally, we see daily an institution sen- 
tencing men for refusing to do a thing forbidden by the 
laws, and these documents are signed by the head of the 
state and countersigned by his minister. 

" First of all, these courts should have no power over 
a civilian, and should not be able to restrain him from 
expressing his opinions, or from acting as he chooses. 
Has not, for instance, an attorney lately been sentenced 
by a court of honor in Prussia because in a trial before 
the regular courts he had blamed the military authori- 
ties ? These courts of honor should not have the au- 
thority to disgrace a man before the community simply 
because the name of the man is still inscribed on the 

216 



MODERN GERMANY 

list of Landwelir, or reserve, officers long after he has 
ceased to wear a uniform." 

At all times in Germany one can be brought before 
this extraordinary court, which acts in temporal affairs 
very much like the old inquisition and excommunicating 
tribunal. Its proceedings are secret, and when one 
emerges from them one stands branded as a *^ dishonor- 
able" man : for if this court does not really "dishonor" 
a man, why keep up "courts of honor" ? In a country 
like Germany, where the people never had sufficient 
sense to discriminate between the " title " and the 
"value" of a man, this public mark of punishment, this 
degradation inflicted by the state, regardless of laws and 
constitutional statutes, is necessarily not only dreaded, 
but a bar to success in a civilian's career ; for innate 
German servility is here as always the foundation of the 
state's arbitrary power. Can a bank clerk, for instance, 
be promoted to the position of cashier after he has been 
degraded by a court of honor, and after having lost his 
former title of lieutenant in the reserves ? A letter, a 
conversation in a tavern, a speech, or an article in a news- 
paper, is a sufficient reason for being made an outcast in 
modern Germany, if one has been bold enough to criti- 
cise or to blame. What is the use of a parliament to 
make laws — against fighting duels, for instance — if the 
state has all the necessary power to compel a man to vio- 
late them ? That Mr. Krafft's criticisms were true has 
been illustrated on his own person, for he has been " de- 
graded" by a court of honor for having told the truth. 

Nothing illustrates better the state of political and 
social degradation to which German state methods have 
again gradually led German society than the well-known 
Kotze affair, which, even before the Tausch trial, re- 
vealed what the state was trying to conceal. As the 

217 



MODERN GERMANY 

London Times expressed it during the winter of 1895-96, 
the Kotze scandal presents such incredible features of 
German civilization that it is difficult for an Englishman 
or an American to understand how such things can hap- 
pen in a modern European state. For the benefit of 
American readers who are not familiar with these feat- 
ures, we will briefly review the facts. 

During the last few years a great many of the German 
ladies occupying high positions at the court of William 
II. had been annoyed — as well as many gentlemen of 
that court — by anonymous letters, threatening disagree- 
able revelations or mysterious prosecutions, unless they 
behaved according to the anonymous advices. There 
were many of these letters, and they were evidently writ- 
ten by a person knowing intimately the emperor^s, the 
court's, and everybody's affairs. They appeared to be 
all in the same handwriting ; and the v/riter seemed to 
possess such extraordinary information — which always 
turned out afterwards to be correct — as only a man could 
possess who stood very near the top of the German social 
ladder. Over three hundred such letters had been writ- 
ten, as it turned out later on. One day a highly respect- 
able young wife of an adjutant to the emperor was de- 
nounced to her husband, who, knowing the falsity of the 
anonymous charge, laid the letter before the emperor. 
The latter, much incensed at these disgraceful perform- 
ences, tried vainly to investigate the matter. His efforts 
did not succeed — nor have they ever succeeded — in un- 
ravelling the mystery. The anonymous letters continued 
to arrive. One day one of the courtiers, having entered 
the reading-room of the most aristocratic club in Berlin, 
happened to find on the blotting-paper lying on one of 
the writing-desks traces of the familiar handwriting of 
the anonymous letters. The anonymous writer had evi- 

218 



MODERN GERMANY 

dently been sitting and writing there, and he had left an 
imprint of a note on the blotting-paper. Who had been 
writing that day at that desk ? The master of cere- 
monies of the court, a cavalry officer, one Baron von 
Kotze. 

The discovered evidence was immediately laid before 
the emperor, who, without any regard for any human or 
constitutional rights of a *^' subject, ^^ without any trial, 
had the baron arrested at his house by an officer of the 
court, carried off to jail, and kept there for three months 
under secret, non-judiciary proceedings. The baron was 
now buried alive, with no communication with the out- 
side world ; but, strange to say, the letters continued to 
arrive, as if nothing had happened. Evidently Kotze 
could not be writing them, and this thought dawned on 
the imperial mind. The man who had vainly protested 
his innocence, and had vainly asked to be heard, was now 
allowed to appear as a prisoner before his master. He 
denied having ever written such notes, and expressed the 
conviction that a certain dignitary at court, who was his 
rival for promotion to the higher office of ** grand " mas- 
ter of ceremonies, had blackened his character and mis- 
represented the matter. This man, being confronted 
with Kotze, challenged the latter; but Kotze refused the 
duel, claiming that his honor was too much at stake to 
be vindicated otherwise than by a trial before the courts ; 
and he insisted upon proving his innocence and his ad- 
versary's guilt in such a trial. 

Kotze was now released from the jail where he had 
been illegally confined by a caprice of the head of the 
state; but the gossip of the officer caste was against him. 
He was called before the court of honor of the regiment 
to which he was nominally attached, and sentenced to be 
degraded for having refused to fight. His enemies thus 

219 



MODERN GERMANY 

crnshed him ; for the emperor would not allow a public 
trial, where the depravity of the court would inevitably 
have appeared before the nation. Kotze had lost caste 
by this sentence. 

One day, his enemies being much elated over their 
victory, one Baron von Schrader, another officer of the 
court, openly insulted and challenged Kotze ; the latter 
accepted the duel and shot him dead. This fact cooled 
somewhat the ardor of his persecutors ; but now they 
changed their tactics, and the state prosecuted Kotze for 
having fought this duel — a few months after sentencing 
him to degradation because he had refused to fight. He 
was sentenced to two years' incarceration in a fortress ; 
but after a while he was released from this second im- 
prisonment, being pardoned by the head of the state. 

It is difficult for an American reader to understand 
such a condition of affairs in a so-called "highly civil- 
ized community "; and in order to understand it, one is 
obliged to examine minutely the symptoms of the pres- 
ent German disease, the socialistic cancer, which is pen- 
etrating more and more into the flesh of the nation. 
The few illustrations, as they are, show that under its 
military uniform modern Germany, with its perverted 
notions of truly Christian, truly manly culture, has reach- 
ed a condition which, notwithstanding all the improve- 
ments of our century, is in some respects much lower 
than the condition of its French rival. Apparently 
Germany has more order and a better administration ; 
in reality the abyss between the people and the state, 
the conflict between the owners of the national estate 
and their manager, the government, is more serious in 
Germany than in France, where governments have been 
overthrown so often. 

One of the most scandalous manifestations of the 

220 



MODERN GERMANY 

bnreancratic corrnption was exhibited very recently in 
the two Tansch trials. They made a deep impression in 
Europe. As everybody knows, the German state keeps 
np what it calls its political police. The duty of this 
body consists in watching and gagging the press, in giv- 
ing pecuniary rewards to some journals and persecuting 
others. There is an appro^Driation for it in the German 
budget. Bismarck^s expression, ^^ the reptile press," was 
an allusion to a number of newspapers which sell their 
support in Germany for a consideration. As the Tausch 
trials showed, the state is constantly bribing newspapers 
to suppress facts, to launch false news, to cheat the pub- 
lic. One Von Tausch, a functionary at the head of this 
institution, having falsified the despatches to the Ger- 
man press reporting the speech of the Czar at the dinner 
given by the German Emperor in Breslau in 1896, the 
foreign secretary, Von Marshall, was accused of having 
given Tausch the order to publish a false version of this 
speech. The question, like all these German conflicts, 
was very trivial in itself, but it resulted in two scandal- 
ous trials, in which the German state was publicly con- 
victed of criminal practices. Tausch admitted, as did 
also other functionaries, that they often forged names, 
deceived, and lied in the exercise of their great functions ; 
and he exculpated himself by showing that his practices 
had the sanction of the highest people in the empire. 
The leading political men had to appear as witnesses, 
and Tausch was acquitted. 

The old Erench monarchy, with its corruption, had 
never made any claims to moral purity ; it never posed 
as the incarnate rejpresentative of political and social ex- 
cellence. But modern Germany, and especially " official 
Germany," presents to the world at the end of the nine- 
teenth century the sickening spectacle of hypocritical 

231 



MODERN GERMANY 

despotism. Its emperor, constantly brandishing his 
sword before the world, in military parades, reviews, 
banquets, commemorations of battles, etc., hardly ever 
opens his month without reminding his people that G-od 
inspires Germany and him. With all this sham religion 
constantly paraded before the public, he seems to have 
forgotten, like all Germany, that a nation which has re- 
placed higher ideals by a sword is doomed to lose very 
soon its importance in the world. 

The practical results of the more and more perverting 
measures adopted by the state during the last few years 
are apparent ; for this very country, to which Europe 
owes a resurrection of caste prejudices and inquisitorial 
proceedings, of mediasval class distinctions based not on 
scattered rights and privileges, but on a centralized state 
despotism, is also the country to which we owe the ne- 
farious doctrine of socialism, with its parallel doctrine 
of paternal state autocracy. For the more vertical the 
pressure exercised by the German state, the more the 
people react. Ten years ago the socialists had only a 
few seats in the German parliament ; they had not many 
voters. Since then their number has increased by leaps 
and bounds ; their partisans are increasing every day. 
Their fight is a bitter fight, a life - and - death struggle 
between official bureaucratic Germany, with its ludicrous 
standards of honor and culture, its absolute tyranny, and 
its growing corruption on one side, and the people on 
the other. The persecutions against their leaders, their 
writers, their editors, like all persecutions, only sur- 
round them with a halo of justice and right, which no 
political police can remove. Some of the leaders, like 
Liebknecht and others, when not sitting in parliament, 
are spending their lives in prison, convicted by mercenary 
judges, humble tools of the state. Every criticism, every 

223 



MODERN GERMANY 

allusion to a denial of justice, is immediately stopped. 
The social democratic party of Germany in 1871 had 
two representatives in the Reichstag; in 1884 it had 
twenty-four ; it has now forty-three ; and as, since the 
last election three years ago, the symptoms of bureau- 
cratic corruption and misrule have ceased to be doubt- 
ful, it is generally conceded in Germany that this num- 
ber will be considerably increased this year, when the 
new election takes place. The government has no ma- 
jority in parliament ; and were it not for the fact that 
the opposition is divided into several groups, all antago- 
nistic to each other, and that the German people always 
attributes to the state the mission to solve all social ques- 
tions, its authority would now already be seriously im- 
paired. An unlucky war can at any time precipitate a 
crisis, as it has done in France. Such is the result of 
German state paternalism : social hatred and dissatis- 
faction among the people, and insecurity for the state ; 
everybody expecting always from omnipotent managers 
virtues which nobody possesses. 



ADDENDUM 

These pages were written before the German elections of June, 
,1898. The prediction made on page 223 has been fulfilled. The 
Socialists have increased considerably their number. They had 
1,786,738 votes in 1893. The last returns increased this number 
to 2,125,000. In Prussia alone, the stronghold of the Hohenzol 
lern dynasty, the increase has been about 200,000 voters. The 
number of Socialists in the Reichstag is now 57, instead of 43. It 
should really be 111, in proportion to the voting population. But 
the German repartition of electoral divisions is notably unfair ; 
thus, the Conservatives, with 900,000 votes, occupy 60 seats ; the 
Catholic ultramontane party (the Centre, as it is called) obtained 
1,333,000 votes, and has 103 representatives in Parliament, where 
the Socialists, with their 2,125,000 voters, have, as already stated, 
only 57. 



CONCLUSION 

That the people is the source of all political power in 
the United States nobody denies. But how much of 
this power should be delegated and transferred to a cor- 
poration — the most formidable and oppressive of all cor- 
porations in human history — this, my populistic friend, 
is really the question ! Whether the owner shall trust 
much to an ideal manager represented by functionaries 
working only for wages, is a point on which the above 
related European experiments may perhaps throw some 
light ; a lurid light much dimmed by revolutionary 
smoke. 

What the people requires theoretically from the state 
in its aspirations, and what it really receives, are two 
different quantities ; and the greater the popular require- 
ments made on the state, the more unsatisfactory the 
result. The greater, the more cumbersome, and the 
more complicated the machine, the more liable it is to 
get out of order ; the more wonderful the various prod- 
ucts you expect from your national machine, the smaller 
their value, the more worthless their quality becomes ; 
the more additions you make to the machinery, the more 
crushing is its weight, the more impracticable its use ; 
for the theory on which it is constructed is bad, being 
contrary to natural laws. Bureaucrats, functionaries, 
representatives of all kinds, do not possess more angelic 

324 



CONCLUSION 

virtues than the average man ; and what the people's 
authority becomes when delegated to them through the 
ideal channel of the state is what continental Europe 
has only too much demonstrated. To expect in the New 
World much benefit from an increase of state attributes, 
when this increase has been the ruin of nations that 
formerly stood at the head of Christian civilization, is 
to expect an impossible result. How much of its au- 
thority the people must delegate to its servants, is a 
question which, in the writer's humble opinion, should 
be answered with the greatest possible care ; for popu- 
lism, state paternalism, and despotism are the three 
steps by which individual man, and consequently the 
nation composed of human units, reaches the volcanic 
region of anarchy. 



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